You Are Not So Smart 065 - Survivorship Bias (rebroadcast)
Dec 17, 2015
31:07
The problem with sorting out failures and successes is that failures are often muted, destroyed, or somehow removed from sight while successes are left behind, weighting your decisions and perceptions, tilting your view of the world.
That means to be successful you must learn how to seek out what is missing. You must learn what not to do. Unfortunately, survivorship bias stands between you and the epiphanies you seek.
To learn how to combat this pernicious bias, we explore the story of Abraham Wald and the Department of War Math founded during World War II.