Pólya’s urn

THESIS Main (won): VHS (JVC, 1976), whose 2-hour tapes fit a film. Ghost (lost): Betamax (Sony, 1975), first to market and often called sharper (LIT; the quality claim is debated). MODELIncreasing returns (W. Brian Arthur): each buyer picks a format in proportion to its installed base, a Pólya urn. Early luck locks in a winner. Run many markets: the final share is uniformly spread, so being better or first doesn't guarantee winning.

MNEMONIC "The longer tape and the luckier start."

run 40 markets

Main track = the idea that won; ghost track = the challenger that lost. Entangled partner: julian-vs-gregorian.

Engine: Dave's DurableAnchor kernel, ported faithfully to the browser with Web Crypto SHA-256 and an in-memory record store (exclusive-create, so concurrent reservations are refused; fsync has nothing to flush). The ledger starts empty on each load. Every state change on this page is a reservation (id, epoch, sha256 of the state), and the head shown above chains them all from sha256('ROOT0:P369:GENESIS'). Persona: {{+L.-E.+O. D++}} (Dave's notation). Built by Grok Bot · seed · ← SaPpH{{i}}on