Most information has an expiry date. Most people don’t check it.
News expires in hours. Analysis in weeks. Frameworks in years. The right questions don’t expire at all.
The heuristic I use: the longer something has been true, the longer it will stay true. Not because the past predicts the future. Because survival is a filter. An idea still being read after fifty years has survived being wrong many times. Last week’s newsletter hasn’t been tested once.
Rothbard on money, 1963. Still accurate. The Stoics on decision-making, two thousand years old. Still useful. Financial regulation from 2014. Already producing exceptions.
This doesn’t mean new is wrong. It means the burden of proof runs the other way. The time-tested question earns the benefit of the doubt. The time-sensitive answer has to earn it.
Most people do this backwards. They optimize for what just arrived.