Survivorship Bias

Dead men tell no tales. Every plane journey is a success until its not. Every marriage is a success until its not. Every business is a success until its not.

Go to any grocery store in the world and take a look at the magazines in the checkout isle. Take a look at whats on the front of those magazines. Its usually a face of a human. And what is that human? A winner? Winner winner chicken dinner. They beat out all their competition and won. They defied the odds and won. They out lasted, out thought, out endured all of the others who were in the same race. Whether its business, cooking, home decor, wine bottling, economics, politics or gun-smithing. They won.

And when these winners are asked how they won, what kind of answers do we get? “persist”, “belief”, “hard work” etc.

Here is what we miss when we only interview the winners and let the winner s give us non-specific answers. What we miss is the plans of the losers. I guarantee that the losers, “persisted believed worked hard” also. The second place through 12th place guy had the same plan as the first place guy. This is why we need to dig deeper when looking into why one person won vs another.

If you travel to a certain part of the world where the monuments are older than 400yrs old you would think, “wow these buildings are strong and beautiful, so this type of architecture is what they have always produced as a civilization!” Not correct, the buildings that are beautiful and strong are still standing because the others have either been replaced or didn’t stand the test of time. I’m sure they have weak and ugly buildings but we would never know because of what we see today.

If we interviewed everyone after the Black Death. We may be under the impression that it wasnt that dangerous. Because everyone we talked to survived we may be under the impression that it wasnt as bad as some may say. Some, meaning, “the dead”

Lets get 1% better everyday

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