Survivorship Bias: The Tale of Forgotten Failures

 
 

First Seen

Farnam Street Blog



 

Why It’s Interesting

  • Survivorship bias leads to an erroneous understanding of cause and effect. People see correlation in mere coincidence.

  • Just as history is written by the winners, so is much of our knowledge about business. Success are lauded for decades, failures are largely ignored.

  • Don’t look just at what you can see. Consider all the things that started on the same path but didn’t make it.

  • If you’re going to do something, do it fully informed.