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Survivorship Bias

xkcd.com

221–230 of 231 posts

Re: Survivorship Bias

#221
post #220
post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The NTS fallacy is based upon goalpost moving with no clear metric for success. Graduating medical school is definably not goalpost moving.

My observation was that introducing the "didn't work hard enough" element _is_ moving the goalposts.

You misunderstand the "No True Scotsman" fallacy to apply it to this situation. There's a metric for success (graduating), and no one claimed that the only possible way that someone didn't make it is "work harder". I said that perhaps that's the reason since by the time people make it to medical school, they're on a fairly even playing field.

NTS is typically applicable when someone expresses a goal like "being a good Christian" and then continues to redefine what that means, never admitting that some are good Christians because of endless redefinitions of the metrics.

Re: Survivorship Bias

#222
post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't disagree that the AMA's stranglehold on MD distribution is a problem. But I have several members of my family who are/were doctors. Residency is hard, pure and simple. It's hard for everyone and takes tremendous perseverance. But perseverance is the opposite of luck.

So how much of it is beneficial or even necessary? (obviously the training and education received is both of those things; I'm talking about the method)

I don't know what the perfect method is or if there is even a perfect method performable by all instructors and applicable to all medical students.

I do know in my personal life that the "trial by fire" method of education makes a huge impression and can be very successful. The military uses this method as well to great historical success.

Re: Survivorship Bias

#223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a template, lots of businesses fit it pretty well. He isn't inviting competition to his corner of the garden, you'll have to find your own. This won't work for self-indulgent humans, very true - so it won't work for everyone.

I refer to what I already wrote. Nothing you say addresses my point. It only works for some . > lots of businesses fit it pretty well. Keyword: "businesses". If everybody follows that path, who is going to work at those businesses? You completely failed to grasp my point. You keep looking at a niche and miss the big picture: I only works for a few ! Not to mention what it would mean if everybody could become a millio…

You are agreeing with me strenuously. Anybody can follow the path, with more success than any of the common approaches to starting a business. No approach will guarantee success for everyone who tries to start a business, needless to say.

Re: Survivorship Bias

#224
post #213
post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The bar for 'millionaire' is significantly lower than it once was. Inflation, combined (in some markets) with huge raises in property values, basically means that anyone who's paid their house off is likely to qualify. A total net worth (including real estate etc.) of more than a million dollars doesn't imply that someone's particularly wealthy the way it once did.

The home you live in is usually not included when classifying high net worth individuals. A common definition at least here in Australia is: " a HNWI defined as having more than US$1 million in investable assets, excluding their primary residence, collectibles and consumables"

Huh, I'd missed that point. Thanks.

Re: Survivorship Bias

#225
post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think what you're saying holds correct. You're just applying survivorship bias at a smaller and therefore less obvious scale. We do not know the amount of luck based causality versus non luck based. What we do know is the probability of ending up a millionaire vs not. So say it's 10% millionaire. I'm pulling this out of my ars. Now the question becomes what non luck based actions were performed by the 10% of…

We know I am correct that success is not entirely luck, because we can observe that no success comes to someone who just sits and waits for luck to strike them like a bolt of lightning. Even the lottery winner had to go out and buy the lottery ticket. Note I'm partially defining success as something like "a sustained and significant increase in wealth", so by my metric here even someone lucky enough to be born to the…

It seems you don't really argue to know that luck is or isn't the only factor. Which is really what I'm against. I'm against someone claiming he has proof of an answer, and he believes it is the full truth.

So ya, I think the danger part you're also generalizing a little. There are some people who telling them that luck isn't a factor is doing them a disservice. Like people who have been unlucky. There are a lot of people who try and fail. Why is that? It is not enough to work hard and spend a lot of time chasing success, that's why. That's the essence of survivorship bias. You must also be talented, smart, strong, tall, healthy, handsome, connected, etc. These things I argue you have or don't pretty much based out of luck. Out of everyone who tries, those who succeed will have either because of pure luck, like imagine everyone trying did 100% exactly the same actions, and it still ends up that only a fraction of those succeed, that would be pure luck. Or, it is the luck of what has caused you to beat the others, to think of better actions, and execute them better, to end up being one of the successful ones.

I personally think if our society acknowledged this, maybe we'd start thinking about society differently. Maybe we'd be more inclined to accept social programs. Instead of seeing everyone who is not a millionaire as lazy, and like it is entirely their fault. Maybe we'd have to come up with an organisation structure where maybe we don't have a winner takes most model. Or we'd need to recognize people's individual strengths, and make sure we find a way to make them helpful in those ways.

I see your point, and I actually mostly agree. I think it just depends who the audience is. If you talk to youths, obviously you should try to motivate them and ingrain into them a sense of having to work for success, and try to give them the smarts to do so. Also have them believe the effort is not wasted, and will make a difference in their life. But if you talk to people struggling to succeed, even after putting in the effort, I think you should also recognize that they can't be blamed entirely, a big part of success is luck. In the end, our society must find the right balance between the two.

Re: Survivorship Bias

#226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure. Talent is a function of luck too. I'm not denying the role of luck. Just saying that someone who made it big is not following a random policy, and that imitating their behaviour might help you too.

If talent counts as luck, everything does. Maybe you mean that talent is also outside the individuals purview? In the context of predicting success it does not make sense to put talent - or other non-changeable initial endowments like country of birth, parental wealth, attractiveness - into the "luck" bucket. While you can't do anything about these factors, an accurate assessment of them will tell you a lot about you…

why would talent not count as luck?

Re: Survivorship Bias

#227
post #38

I believe that success does largely depend on capitalizing on lucky breaks. However, I also believe that each and every one of us gets lucky breaks. What matters is can you spot lucky breaks,and when you do spot them, how do you react? I think it's very possible to train yourself to have the awareness to be able to analyze situations, recognize lucky breaks frequently and just run with them. In a word, you could call…

>However, I also believe that each and every one of us gets lucky breaks. Why do you assume this?

Even being born is a lucky break

Re: Survivorship Bias

#228
post #38

I believe that success does largely depend on capitalizing on lucky breaks. However, I also believe that each and every one of us gets lucky breaks. What matters is can you spot lucky breaks,and when you do spot them, how do you react? I think it's very possible to train yourself to have the awareness to be able to analyze situations, recognize lucky breaks frequently and just run with them. In a word, you could call…

> However, I also believe that each and every one of us gets lucky breaks. Everyone? How about people who have no talents whatsoever - they are at best average (or a bit above average) at everything that could be useful? Most people are like that.

Not all lucky breaks involve talent. For example being born into a well off family. Further to the point, you'd not imagine the number of rich kids who piss away that particular lucky break

Re: Survivorship Bias

#229

I had a professor who had the class stand up and all start flipping coins. If you flipped tails you sat down and stopped. After several iterations he interviewed the last remaining standing person to ask him what hard work he did to become such a good coin flipper, and if he had any secrets about coin flipping success he wanted to share with the class. It was a pretty nice exercise and I think applicable generally to…

"The secrets to my coin flipping success? Easy - just keep standing."

Re: Survivorship Bias

#230
post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're talking 1% of Australia's population. But, hey, let's assume that counts as "common." What I'm hearing is "since outcome X is commonly found happening for people, then outcome X must be attributable to some action taken by those people." I'm not sure how you are concluding this. Cancer is common, too--much more common than becoming a millionaire. Is a cancer diagnosis attributable to someone's actions or is it…

> I'm not sure how you are concluding this. 1 in 100 Australians are in the millionaire club. By contrast winning the Powerball Lottery has odds of 76,767,600:1 To win Powerball you need "only" to match 7 numbers from a pool of 40 possible choices. By contrast to become a millionaire you had to make 1000s of individual decisions along the way and yet every year approx 10,000 new millionaires join the ranks. How many…

The fact that something is more common, doesn't mean it's not still largely luck.

Ignore the powerball and look at scratch off lottery winners. There are thousands of people who 'win' at it every day but that doesn't mean it's not luck.

You're mixing frequency with luck. Something can occur frequently and still be heavily influenced by luck.

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