I went back to my parents' house after a long time and was reading manga left in my room.
Uso-kui is a manga that mixes gambling and action.
In it, the head of an organization changes the organization's systems, and the line spoken then is this post's title.
"Old things are good; they're well made."
With the context around it, I thought it was a good line — but logically, things improved over time, i.e. the latest version, should be best.
After reading the manga, I was working on a task of summarizing a huge amount of information into materials.
No good idea would come, so I clung to a framework and tried to think with it.
It organized the information well, and I managed to process it at a not-bad level — a real help.
I don't usually process information with frameworks; I tend to think in prose and summarize that way.
In fact, that framework itself is sometimes called old or not very usable today — but this time it worked.
(Though of course there's the premise that I'd already absorbed a lot of information before using it.)
So if there are cases where older things are better — what's the cause?
First, needless to say: they're simple and easy to keep in mind.
Rules evolve to handle more situations. Complexity rises. Rules appear for non-essential edge cases and become constraints.
Whether they apply to the case in front of you is separate — they still consume resources just to be aware of and grasp.
You start from the minimum necessary, then shift toward the best rules for the risk situation.
It might connect to the idea that if you read, read the classics.
Many books are weeded out by time's baptism, so surviving classics are more likely to be masterpieces. Same for business frameworks: many appear over time, but frameworks that somehow survive may still be usable.
Of course that's a different argument from "old is good," since old things aren't necessarily standing alone in parallel with current rules — but anyway.
Beyond the simplicity and ease of keeping in mind, if I go by feel, I wondered if another strength is heat — passion.
Old things are the minimum needed at that time — like a company at founding: chaotic and uncertain. What the members then thought was the minimum needed to grow the organization, and there's a pure feeling that only exists then.
When I reread this blog, early posts from the founding period sometimes feel especially good. I was writing my thinking single-mindedly, not aimed at anyone, wanting something to accumulate as an asset over maybe a decade of running the blog — and I like some of the content, but also feel the more pure feeling from when the blog started is packed in.
P.S.
Every time I go home I reread various manga, but isn't Death Note just too good?
And when you binge it, after L dies the situation gets so complicated you get tired and start skimming — that has to be a common experience.
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