Nassim Taleb wrote: “Against neophilia: It is the oldest and most archaic practices, habits, and methods that – conditional on having survived – should last the longest; but the most unexplainable and irrational ones will do best. The more unexplainable, the more robust. The irrational is indestructible.”
At what point the subject of neophilia turns into a “survivor”? 25 years, 2,500 years, etc…? The tablets of Mount Sinai were as neophilic as the tablets produced by Steve Jobs. Not only that but they were doubly redundant and hence “anti-fragile”. Never mind that Moses smashed them in short order. I share Taleb’s diastase for the rampant neophilia, especially on the Internet. But at what point it becomes a “conditional survivor”? I think a more elegant description is when John Gray questions the contemporary unquestioned equation of progress and good, almost never true or good.
Photo via flickr/paulinasza
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