Domain facts need aggressive updating; structural principles gain trust with age — opposite strategies

Why This Is a Rule

Knowledge has two fundamentally different relationships with time, and applying the wrong temporal strategy produces opposite errors.

Domain-specific facts (treatment protocols, software frameworks, market conditions, regulations) depreciate rapidly. A 2020 best practice for React might be antipattern by 2026. Medical treatment protocols update annually. Market conditions shift quarterly. For these, recency is a quality signal — newer information is more likely to be accurate. The update strategy: seek the latest version, be suspicious of aged sources, schedule depreciation reviews (Quarterly: scan notes for expired information — update, archive with context, or delete).

Structural principles (logic, mathematics, core psychological mechanisms, thermodynamics) gain trust with age. The Lindy Effect (Taleb, 2012): the longer a structural idea has survived, the longer it's likely to continue surviving. A principle that's held for 2,000 years (Aristotle's logic) is more trustworthy than one proposed last year. The update strategy: trust old sources more, be suspicious of "revolutionary" replacements, and only update when replication evidence is overwhelming.

Applying the wrong strategy: trusting a 5-year-old framework recommendation (domain fact treated as durable) or dismissing a 50-year-old psychological principle as "outdated" (structural principle treated as perishable).

When This Fires

• Evaluating whether stored information is still valid (Quarterly: scan notes for expired information — update, archive with context, or delete depreciation reviews)
• Deciding whether to update your knowledge about a topic
• When someone dismisses established knowledge as "old" or defends outdated practices as "proven"
• Classifying new information for appropriate shelf-life treatment

Common Failure Mode

Applying uniform temporal treatment: either treating all knowledge as rapidly depreciating (constantly chasing the newest research, ignoring Lindy-tested foundations) or treating all knowledge as timeless (relying on decade-old framework comparisons, trusting market analyses from three years ago). The classification matters — different knowledge types need different strategies.

The Protocol

When evaluating information currency: (1) Classify: is this a domain-specific fact or a structural principle? (2) Domain facts → apply aggressive temporal updating. Check: when was this published? Have conditions changed since? Is there a newer version? (3) Structural principles → apply Lindy reasoning. Check: how long has this principle been established? Has it survived multiple paradigm shifts? Does new evidence genuinely challenge the mechanism, or just the application? (4) Apply opposite update strategies: suspicious of old domain facts, trusting of old structural principles.