The RNZ nine-to-noon programme interviewed a crypto-shill on the 8th of May 2025. The subject of the interview was the 'Lindy Effect' which is also known to some as 'regulatory escape velocity'.
The gist of the effect is that the longer something exists, the more justified it's existence is. I can imagine the eyelids of agnostics, scientists and statisticians twitching at this thought, and they are not alone, because the effect is also an example of base rate fallacy being ignored for financial gain. For it to be taken seriously is unscientific in the extreme.
Argumentum ad verecundiam is one of the basic logical fallacies, second to argumentum ad hominem. Ad verecundiam is argument from authority, and the Lindy effect also straddles this by assuming longevity, like the longevity of a Church for example, makes it some kind of scientific authority: the interview would make Galileo turn in his grave.
When applied to things like cryptographic hash functions the supposed wisdom of the effect becomes a serious security risk, because hash functions work, until they don't, and mathematical proofs against them are hiding in plain sight, hidden only by a lack of determination and imagination to factorize them and produce associated decompression functions.
It's basic naivety or being out-of-technical depth to assume the endurance of a one-way function is it's strength and MD4 is a case in point here, it wasn't broken by anything to do with Moore's Law it was broken upon someone deciding to 'give it a go'. Once upon a time not so long ago (1990), MD4 was considered as collision resistant as SHA-2 is today.
The following day after the interview, Bitcoin and crypto featured in the RNZ midday report as if it has a femtogram of legitimacy. Have crypto shills replaced the editors at RNZ? I'm being facetious, of course, but it wasn't a question I had until hearing this ad verecundiam in disguise as the 'Lindy' effect.
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