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Survivorship Bias

xkcd.com

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Re: Survivorship Bias

#151

Post by jerf »

EduardoBautista wrote: post #149
6nf wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You still have to flip the coin

A much better example would be to have all students run around a 400 meter track with some students having 1 - 100 meter head start.

No, that would completely miss the point.

This isn't about inequality or privilege, this is about survivorship bias. The entire point is to completely remove all those issues in a way that makes it obvious to everybody that the only possible explanation in this made-up example is blind luck.

In the real world, it isn't all blind luck, but sometimes there are cases where the luck signal does in fact overwhelm everything else, lotteries being a great example.

Re: Survivorship Bias

#152

Post by devdad »

EduardoBautista wrote: post #149
6nf wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You still have to flip the coin

A much better example would be to have all students run around a 400 meter track with some students having 1 - 100 meter head start.

Some students would have to start at 600 meters with led shoes and weights in their hands. And another group should get to start at 200 meters on bikes.

Re: Survivorship Bias

#153

Post by TeMPOraL »

EduardoBautista wrote: post #149
6nf wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You still have to flip the coin

A much better example would be to have all students run around a 400 meter track with some students having 1 - 100 meter head start.

Try 100-200m head start, because 1-10m doesn't appropriately capture how successes compound over time.

Re: Survivorship Bias

#154

Post by jerf »

ryandrake wrote: post #144
ux-app wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Not compared with the loads of stories of people who worked hard, improved themselves, and still don't earn anywhere near $1M/yr The vast majority of single digit millionaires are doctors, lawyers, construction company owners. I've even personally met a factory worker who retired with > $1mm in savings due to prudent money management (no lottery wins, just basic financial management for 30+ years). I live in a compl…

It's not about whether they're single-digit millionaires or billionaires. It's about falsely attributing a causal relationship between the people's actions and their success. It's about ignoring the counterfactual cases. What about the factory workers who also practiced prudent money management and did not end up millionaires? What about the many other dirt movers who worked just as hard but did not end up being the…

"What about the factory workers who also practiced prudent money management and did not end up millionaires?"

Then he at least ended up better off than he would have if he had not practiced prudent money management. Anything else would require stretching the definition of "prudent" beyond anything that fits.

It is a fallacy to believe all of life's outcomes are purely due to skill, one that will harm anyone who acts on it. But it is also a fallacy to believe that all of life's outcomes are purely based on luck and privilege, and of the two, this one is far more harmful to anyone who acts on it than the first one.

It is also a fallacy to believe that all possibly skill improvements are equal, a fallacy that helps people over-attribute things to luck when they see "Well, these two people both worked on skills and look at their divergent outcomes!" But if one guy was carefully tuning the skills to things that the market wanted and would lead to success, and the other guy followed, say, a socially-approved educational outcome that produced a very shiny credential, even perhaps in the same field, but did not provide real things that anybody else wanted, you will get divergent outcomes. But that will be less due to luck than someone who assumes that the skills obtained by both were the same would think.

Re: Survivorship Bias

#155

Post by xxs »

devdad wrote: post #152
EduardoBautista wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A much better example would be to have all students run around a 400 meter track with some students having 1 - 100 meter head start.

Some students would have to start at 600 meters with led shoes and weights in their hands. And another group should get to start at 200 meters on bikes.

when I read 'led shoes', I thought of the one that literally have LED on them and flash/glow. Then I realized it was meant to be the lead element (Pb), that's actually pronounced (led)...

Also typing/pronouncing/using 'LED lights' makes for a great tautology. ("Light emitting diode" lights)

English is weird, sometimes.

Re: Survivorship Bias

#156

Post by [deleted] »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #153
EduardoBautista wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A much better example would be to have all students run around a 400 meter track with some students having 1 - 100 meter head start.

Try 100-200m head start, because 1-10m doesn't appropriately capture how successes compound over time.

[deleted]

Re: Survivorship Bias

#157

Post by xxs »

taneq wrote: post #69
ux-app wrote: post #23

Most people are missing the point a bit here. Survivorship bias doesn't relate to people who worked hard, improved themselves and now earn 1-10MM/yr. There are loads of stories like that. Survivorship bias is "Zuck did X, Y and Z, if I do the same then I'll be a multi-billionaire too!" Following the playbook of those that made it into the top 0.001% is foolish and does not properly account for the large part luck pla…

> There are loads of stories like that. Not compared with the loads of stories of people who worked hard, improved themselves, and still don't earn anywhere near $1M/yr. Otherwise thinking that those successes have some meaningful advice to offer wouldn't be survivorship bias, it'd actually be correct. > Following the playbook of those that made it into the top 0.001% is foolish and does not properly account for the…

To "Tailor" Swift and then become a celebrity tailor aka designer, and tell a story. Hmm, she used to be a country singer before she became a pop one... Swift stuff.

Re: Survivorship Bias

#158

Post by ux-app »

ryandrake wrote: post #144
ux-app wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Not compared with the loads of stories of people who worked hard, improved themselves, and still don't earn anywhere near $1M/yr The vast majority of single digit millionaires are doctors, lawyers, construction company owners. I've even personally met a factory worker who retired with > $1mm in savings due to prudent money management (no lottery wins, just basic financial management for 30+ years). I live in a compl…

It's not about whether they're single-digit millionaires or billionaires. It's about falsely attributing a causal relationship between the people's actions and their success. It's about ignoring the counterfactual cases. What about the factory workers who also practiced prudent money management and did not end up millionaires? What about the many other dirt movers who worked just as hard but did not end up being the…

> It's about falsely attributing a causal relationship between the people's actions and their success.

Yes of course that's the definition of survivorship bias. For the most part that doesn't apply to most rich (>$1mm net worth for argument's sake) people. The vast majority of millionaires achieved their success in a perfectly repeatable fashion. This is self evident. How many people globally are at the Zuckerberg tier of success? A dozen maybe. Globally, how many people have a > $1mm net worth by

  - choosing a safe, boring, white collar job
  - running a local service business
  - saving aggressively over decades
the number is in the millions.

It's absurd to think that so many people could become (relatively speaking) rich, using means where there was little or no "causal relationship between the people's actions and their success".

Re: Survivorship Bias

#159

Post by skybrian »

ookblah wrote: post #145

Is luck an important part of success? Yes, I think we all agree, and probably far more so than we give it credit for. But to hand wave it away is... frustrating. I've spent enough time in running a business to know that what works for one person may or may not work for another. I too hate the hero worship that surrounds the ultra successful, the whole "follow XYZ steps and you can be a billionaire!" type stuff. You c…

The comic exaggerates to make a point, but this isn't about black and white; it's about shades of grey. It's about telling the story about what happened in the right way, acknowledging luck as well as hard work, as you just did. People complain when it's done in a simplistic way.

Re: Survivorship Bias

#160

Post by EduardoBautista »

jerf wrote: post #151
EduardoBautista wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A much better example would be to have all students run around a 400 meter track with some students having 1 - 100 meter head start.

No, that would completely miss the point. This isn't about inequality or privilege, this is about survivorship bias. The entire point is to completely remove all those issues in a way that makes it obvious to everybody that the only possible explanation in this made-up example is blind luck. In the real world, it isn't all blind luck, but sometimes there are cases where the luck signal does in fact overwhelm everythi…

Yes, and these are _extreme_ examples. Examples that try to make success appear to be just luck.
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