[checkyoursudo]

> well most of ideas wear out rather quickly and are not useful for centuries

I'm not a religious person, but already a couple thousand years ago the bible folk rightly identified that there is nothing new under the sun. Or as BNL eloquently puts it, "it's all been done before."

I don't know how we could ever quantify it or qualify it, but I would guess that most ideas stick around.

[ozim]

Couple hundred years ago people were still thinking that Earth is in the center of the universe :)

Ideas that survived is survivorship bias - everyday life just shifts around.

[LtWorf]

> Couple hundred years ago people were still thinking that Earth is in the center of the universe :)

They were? Were they educated people or just some random people?

[ozim]

Well just read up: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicolaus_Copernicus

Couple hundred years ago - this was up to 600 years ago - I was not saying about 100 or 200.

[LtWorf]

Well 200 is "a couple"