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Survivorship Bias

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Re: Survivorship Bias

#131

Post by nkrisc »

speby wrote: post #128
taneq wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Of course someone has to actually become a pop star so if you never even approach or try it, then you almost certainly will have zero chance. And in a different decade, who knows, Taylor Swift herself may have never been anything particularly famous or well-known.

Yes, not trying does give you a zero chance of success. That said, trying very hard only gives you a slightly-greater-than zero chance. That's a large increase in effort for a minimal increase in chance of success.

Re: Survivorship Bias

#132

Post by rhino369 »

infinity0 wrote: post #6

What else would you do instead? More often than not I see this point abused by lazy or negative people to justify not doing anything useful. Yes there's survivorship bias, you try to adjust for that, and draw inspiration from the positive parts of the better and more realistic examples. Just because the system is rigged against you, doesn't mean you shouldn't try to achieve things. Not trying to achieve things is dec…

Try to differentiate between what is necessarily and what is sufficient. You might have to work and hard to succeed but that sure as hell isn't the entire equation.

Re: Survivorship Bias

#133

Post by avemg »

BoiledCabbage wrote: post #27
pipio21 wrote: post #24

Like fear, you should take Survivorship bias into account, but it should not dominate you. If you do you will do nothing in life. When I created my first company my parents told me about how hard it was going to be, how few succeed... On the contrary I found it was way easier and natural than studying engineering was, for example, and hundreds or thousands of people could do it. I found most serious people succeed in…

> I found most serious people succeed in business. It is not that hard to become a millionaire, way easier than being a salaried person This is the trouble with discussions on this topic. Everytome Survivorship bias comes up, someone provides "counter evidence" which happens to be a picture perfect example of survivorship bias. Most serious people don't succeed in business. It is hard to become a millionaire. Way mor…

You're forgetting also that a "serious person" is probably classified by their success at their business.

Re: Survivorship Bias

#134

Post by [deleted] »

pg314 wrote: post #66
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's no survivorship bias in going to med school, becoming a specialist and then earning 400k/yr. There is, just not as pronounced as in the lottery example. You ignore all the students who failed or dropped out of med school, didn't make the cut to become a specialist, or had to take a job that didn't make 400k/yr.

[deleted]

Re: Survivorship Bias

#135

Post by marcosdumay »

thenomad wrote: post #40
aaron-lebo wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just take a look at the average YC batch. If anyone is set up to succeed, it is those guys with coaching, resources, and connections. Most of them don't become wildly successful and are only successful in any sense because of the ability to pivot, learn lessons, etc. (see Schwartz's Infogami -> Reddit transition). Or check out small business failure rates. More anecdotally and less scientifically, watch retail/food l…

YC companies are, to the best of my knowledge, mostly looking for unicorn-style plays. That's a very different game to a lifestyle business, and one where I would agree 100% that the failure rate is extremely high. Small business failure rates: well, for starters, the usually-quoted numbers have been updated as of late. A quick Google shows that most sources are converging on around a 60% success rate for small busin…

> there's a significant difference between small business failure rates and small businessperson failure rates

Most people can not afford a failed business. If you are looking at repeated tries, you are taking a huge amount of survivorship bias already.

Re: Survivorship Bias

#136

Post by csorrell »

majani wrote: 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…

I agree with you, but understand too that the ability to capitalize on lucky breaks is not something we're all equally positioned to do. This is where poverty starts to feel a lot like a trap. If it's all you can do to keep your head above water until payday, you're less likely to be able to skip work for the afternoon, or put in the extra time somewhere else to catch that lucky break... whatever that break is, it's going to be more available if you're not coming at it from a survival mentality.

Re: Survivorship Bias

#137

Post by tonyedgecombe »

crusso wrote: post #80

Yes, working hard is not an absolute determiner of success. It may not even be a majority determiner, depending upon your personal experiences or philosophy as well as the domain in which you're trying to achieve success. Winning the lottery is an absurdly extreme example of one domain where luck is provably a majority determiner. It's funny as a comic, but that domain doesn't really map onto many other career domain…

"My observation is that the people who succeed spend more time on the side of that spectrum toward working their tails off than on the side of doing nothing."

My observation is those people are miserable, unhealthy and have poor relationships.

Re: Survivorship Bias

#138

Post by ryandrake »

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 hero-worship that often surrounds successful people.

Re: Survivorship Bias

#140

Post by doubleunplussed »

badestrand wrote: post #106
dbatten wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To expand... it's false, because wealth is not a zero sum game. There is WAY more wealth around on earth in 2017 than there was in 1917, 1017, or 117. Most of the wealthiest folks get rich by inventing/creating new wealth, not by stealing from others. If capitalism was just a competition, we'd still be fighting over castles and wheat and Trojan women. Cars, computers, and indoor plumbing wouldn't exist.

Of course wealth is a zero zum game, because being wealthy is defined as having much more than others, disregarding the absolute amount. This is how we humans work, we compare us to our neighbors. So 1) not everyone can be wealthy and 2) for a single person to become more wealthy someone else gets poorer.

You're using a different definition to those who you disagree with.

Clearly relative wealth is a zero sum game. By definition - relative wealth is defined by your difference from the mean, so any change in society's overall wealth is subtracted off.

Absolute wealth is empirically not zero sum. Any disagreement about whether "wealth is zero sum" is either disputing that empirical result, or arguing that the relative wealth definition is more important somehow. So if you're going to argue that you should provide some reasoning.

I think the truth is somewhere in the middle, and that maximising something like median wealth is what's optimal for human flourishing.

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