19 ms·

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

by ux-app 9y ago

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 played in their success. There's no survivorship bias in going to med school, becoming a specialist and then earning 400k/yr.

thenomad 9y ago
I would agree. One of the things I tell students is that studying success stories is extremely valuable, but only if you do it the right way. You're looking for two things: 1) Trends. 2) Ideas. Not blueprints. (On the med school survivorship bias comment: I don't know about the US medical system, but every other high-earning profession I'm aware of has a significant failure rate. Don't go to law school in the UK assuming that you'll make partner at a major firm, for example - or indeed that you'll automatically manage to land a job as a practicing lawyer.)
- arethuza 9y ago
  I don't know about the rest of the UK but in Scots law a surprisingly low percentage of students from the top law schools even manage to get trainee places. My wife is a fairly successful lawyer and she was adamant that she wouldn't encourage our kids to go into law - too brutal and the probability of success too low to make it worth it. The other nasty secret is that a lot of people who are partners at smaller firms actually have a terrible income - but the are desperate for "partner" status that they will do anything. Edit: Even the old requirements of being very posh and/or stinking rich aren't enough to make it to partner these days...
  - thenomad 9y ago
    That tallies with what I've heard about the rest of the UK and the legal profession, although I'm Scotland-based too.
- Mendenhall 9y ago
  Very much agree with the 2 things you are looking for. I notice one thing that most success dont have, them just sitting on couch doing nothing.
- kerbalspacepro 9y ago
  I think looking at "professional" areas isn't fair. The idea behind OP's comment is that there is still a rather high range of income that you can get to on an "if-then" basis. Becoming a top-tier, MM lawyer is hard, but there is an instruction set that guarantees you'll be able to do it if you follow that instruction set. The more "random" aspect of it is if you actually have the predisposition to actually be capable of following that instruction set.
Kurtz79 9y ago
"There are loads of stories like that." But I believe that's the whole point that the comic is trying to make. Successful stories are those that are shared and those that we choose to have as validation that if we do the same we will be successful. Stories of those that had the same conviction, but failed, are those that few like to share or even acknowledge. Of course, there is plenty of variation on what we consider "success". Going to college, work hard studying a marketable subject is a much lower risk/reward proposition than "funding a startup and creating the next Google".
taway_1212 9y ago
> Survivorship bias doesn't relate to people who worked hard, improved themselves and now earn 1-10MM/yr. I don't have the actual numbers (does anyone?), but my guess would be that universally given <10% of startup success rate includes those people. In other words, you have 90%+ chance of failure, and <10% of chance of ending up with income better than in a job (including very small chance of becoming a multimillionare). For example, there are millions of apps on App Store. Most of those are/were somebody's startup...
- thenomad 9y ago
  Depends what you mean by "startup" and indeed "success". As mentioned elsewhere on this thread, small business survival rates are surprisingly high these days - around 60% depending on whose figures you believe. (I think that's too high, and suspect it doesn't include digital businesses to the extent it should. But 40% wouldn't surprise me, across all sectors and industries.) Wannabe-unicorn success rates at getting to unicorn status are, OTOH, very low indeed. But the rewards are arguably commensurate with that.
stdbrouw 9y ago
> 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. The point is that, due to survivorship bias, it is hard for us to know whether working hard and improving yourself is actually a better path to success than any of the alternative things you could be doing.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
pg314 9y ago
> 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.
- crusso 9y ago
  But if some make it to med school but then don't succeed, how many of those failure cases ended up not working hard enough? Once you have a class of medical students, it's not a lottery system on who succeeds. Short of those who, through no fault of their own, run out of money or have some unfortunate circumstance that takes them out of the program - the ones who succeed seem very likely to have made it on merit of some combination of hard work and intelligence.
  - aristus 9y ago
    You'd be surprised. There are several pressures that keep doctor supply low in the US, not least the medical boards staffed by doctors who ahem have obvious moral hazard to constrain supply and maintain their 400k/year income. A close friend of mine is now a cardiologist. As far as I can tell his residency was a three-year hazing ritual / sleep-dep experiment. To top it off, when he was finally done and out in San Francisco visiting us, he got the call to take some final test. The test had to be done the next day and had to be done in person at one of six cities in the country, the closest one being in LA. We scrambled to get him a plane ticket and some sleep. He passed, but excuse me what the actual fuck? That's not character-building. That's straight up institutionalized caprice.
    - crusso 9y ago
      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.
agentgt 9y ago
I don't know what the bias is called but there is this belief that many successful people have or try to bestow that they "did it all themselves" and "you can too". And in generally many people actually believe this. That is the "self made man" story. Many people believe that the starting point doesn't matter. That outside help doesn't matter. That ash to riches is possible and happens often but the reality is this exceedingly not true at all. > Survivorship bias is "Zuck did X, Y and Z, if I do the same then I'll be a multi-billionaire too!" > There's no survivorship bias in going to med school, becoming a specialist and then earning 400k/yr. And if you ask a great majority of these people they will actually believe that hard work was a majority of their success but I firmly believe it is more analogous to as they say in real estate "location location location". Right parents , timing and money probably made the mass difference. Consequently the survivorship bias is even worse because everyones success story is going to have to be fairly different because the vast majority of us come from a wide array of backgrounds and starting points.
- setrofim_ 9y ago
  > I don't know what the bias is called but there is this belief that many successful people have or try to bestow that they "did it all themselves" and "you can too". This is a combination of egocentric bias[0] and post-hoc rationalization [1] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egocentric_bias https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egocentric_bias [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post_hoc_ergo_propter_hoc https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post_hoc_ergo_propter_hoc
taneq 9y ago
> 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 large part luck played in their success. Exactly. As some guy once said, Taylor Swift telling you to put everything into your dreams of becoming a pop star is like a lotto winner telling you to spend your life savings on lotto tickets (a la the original comic).
- ux-app 9y ago
  >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 completely unremarkable town and there are loads of millionaires around. I bumped into one recently when I accidentally stumbled onto his property while hiking. Judging by the sprawling estate he's at least in $5mm+ net worth range. What does he do for a living? He owns an earth moving company. That's right, at the ripe age of about 45, he made tons of money moving dirt from one spot to another. Lovely guy too. My friend from high school is also in the millionaire club. We're both from a public school background. Unremarkable back stories in just about every way possible. Now he runs a very successful web agency. He's super smart, hard working and I'm sure that accounts for the majority of his success. My point is that there are loads of millionaires around, even in my little backwater. Far, far more than there are lottery winners. Seems to imply that luck plays a far smaller role in the success of millionaire next door types than simple hard work.
  - gk1 9y ago
    You may like reading The Millionaire Next Door. It explains that the majority of millionaires in the US are like those you describe, and not like the flashy movie ones we see in the media. Edit: Link for convenience: https://www.amazon.com/Millionaire-Next-Door-Surprising-Americas/dp/1589795474 https://www.amazon.com/Millionaire-Next-Door-Surprising-Amer...
iplaw 9y ago
It boggles my mind how many people in Dallas are in the $5-50MM net worth range. I am smack in the middle of that range and feel quite unremarkable.
panarky 9y ago
My favorite example of survivorship bias is the US Navy's statistical analysis of returning WW2 planes to determine what parts of the planes received the most damage from anti-aircraft fire. The idea was to selectively add armor to the areas most likely to get hit. But by analyzing returning planes, their sample excluded the planes that were lost. So the better strategy was to add armor to the areas with the least damage instead. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias#/media/File:Survivorship-bias.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias#/media/File:... Now I see survivorship bias everywhere. Retail chains improve their comparable store sales metrics not by actually increasing sales, but by closing stores with declining sales. Money managers and traders with the highest performance often have no special talent, they're just ones who survived.
libertymcateer 9y ago
> Survivorship bias is "Zuck did X, Y and Z, if I do the same then I'll be a multi-billionaire too!" This is also called "cargo cult behavior." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargo_cult#Metaphorical_uses_of_the_term https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargo_cult#Metaphorical_uses_o...
paulcole 9y ago
>Survivorship bias doesn't relate to people who worked hard, improved themselves and now earn 1-10MM/yr. All those people earning 1-10MM/yr? How many of them were born on third base and go around explaining to everyone how they too can hit a triple?
frgtpsswrdlame 9y ago
Actually, I think you are missing the point. >Survivorship bias doesn't relate to people who worked hard, improved themselves and now earn 1-10MM/yr. It absolutely does! Luck and upbringing (which I really consider a subset of luck) are such huge factors in how much money you will make in your life.
optimuspaul 9y ago
I think you are wrong about that. Hard work does not guarantee success. Survivorship bias applies to everything that has a high possibility of failure, which definitely includes med school.
angstrom 9y ago
Thought that was cargo cult. Going through the steps of what was successful in a given situation without understanding the logic behind those steps at the time they were applied or perhaps the reason they worked in the first place assuming luck was not a factor.
pimlottc 9y ago
Er, of course survivorship bias applies - it applies to everything. Not everyone who goes to med school ends up as a high earner, not even all those who graduate. Sure, their success rate is much higher than those who decided to play the lottery instead, but there's always going to be some degree of survivorship bias when the failures are less visible than the successes.
jondubois 9y ago
It's amusing to watch lucky people on HN make comments like this (taking their extreme luck for granted and attributing it to hard work) and then watch them get down-voted by equally hard-working people who have the opposite experience. ... And let's not forget that HN is not an accurate representation of society as a whole (HN itself 'suffers' from survivor bias).
- sdflkd 9y ago
  > It's amusing to watch lucky people on HN make comments like this (taking their extreme luck for granted and attributing it to hard work) and then watch them get down-voted by equally hard-working people who have the opposite experience. It's less amusing when you realize these same arguments are used against minorities/the disadvantaged to keep them down.
debacle 9y ago
> Survivorship bias is "Zuck did X, Y and Z, if I do the same then I'll be a multi-billionaire too!" That's cargo cult.
jondubois 9y ago
>> There's no survivorship bias in going to med school, becoming a specialist and then earning 400k/yr. Even that is not quite true. You need to have relatively well off parents to pay for your 10 years or so of university. One might be tempted to argue that if you're really smart, you can get a scholarship... But even then, can you really get high enough grades to qualify for that scholarship if you have to keep up a 20 hours per week side job to pay for your rent?
didibus 9y ago
There might be though. There's more to luck then we may think. If the world is truly deterministic, it could be that luck is 100% of it. I can see genetics, parenting, the teachers you had, and a whole of other things playing into even the success of just becoming a doctor. In my case, I'm just lucky that the art I love to make, code, is also a highly paid job. Nothing felt hard to get here, I did it because of the passion I have for it, and I have this passion out of luck.

by ux-app 9y ago

thenomad 9y ago

I would agree. One of the things I tell students is that studying success stories is extremely valuable, but only if you do it the right way. You're looking for two things: 1) Trends. 2) Ideas. Not blueprints. (On the med school survivorship bias comment: I don't know about the US medical system, but every other high-earning profession I'm aware of has a significant failure rate. Don't go to law school in the UK assuming that you'll make partner at a major firm, for example - or indeed that you'll automatically manage to land a job as a practicing lawyer.)

arethuza 9y ago
I don't know about the rest of the UK but in Scots law a surprisingly low percentage of students from the top law schools even manage to get trainee places. My wife is a fairly successful lawyer and she was adamant that she wouldn't encourage our kids to go into law - too brutal and the probability of success too low to make it worth it. The other nasty secret is that a lot of people who are partners at smaller firms actually have a terrible income - but the are desperate for "partner" status that they will do anything. Edit: Even the old requirements of being very posh and/or stinking rich aren't enough to make it to partner these days...
- thenomad 9y ago
  That tallies with what I've heard about the rest of the UK and the legal profession, although I'm Scotland-based too.
Mendenhall 9y ago
Very much agree with the 2 things you are looking for. I notice one thing that most success dont have, them just sitting on couch doing nothing.
kerbalspacepro 9y ago
I think looking at "professional" areas isn't fair. The idea behind OP's comment is that there is still a rather high range of income that you can get to on an "if-then" basis. Becoming a top-tier, MM lawyer is hard, but there is an instruction set that guarantees you'll be able to do it if you follow that instruction set. The more "random" aspect of it is if you actually have the predisposition to actually be capable of following that instruction set.

Kurtz79 9y ago

"There are loads of stories like that." But I believe that's the whole point that the comic is trying to make. Successful stories are those that are shared and those that we choose to have as validation that if we do the same we will be successful. Stories of those that had the same conviction, but failed, are those that few like to share or even acknowledge. Of course, there is plenty of variation on what we consider "success". Going to college, work hard studying a marketable subject is a much lower risk/reward proposition than "funding a startup and creating the next Google".

taway_1212 9y ago

> Survivorship bias doesn't relate to people who worked hard, improved themselves and now earn 1-10MM/yr. I don't have the actual numbers (does anyone?), but my guess would be that universally given <10% of startup success rate includes those people. In other words, you have 90%+ chance of failure, and <10% of chance of ending up with income better than in a job (including very small chance of becoming a multimillionare). For example, there are millions of apps on App Store. Most of those are/were somebody's startup...

thenomad 9y ago
Depends what you mean by "startup" and indeed "success". As mentioned elsewhere on this thread, small business survival rates are surprisingly high these days - around 60% depending on whose figures you believe. (I think that's too high, and suspect it doesn't include digital businesses to the extent it should. But 40% wouldn't surprise me, across all sectors and industries.) Wannabe-unicorn success rates at getting to unicorn status are, OTOH, very low indeed. But the rewards are arguably commensurate with that.

stdbrouw 9y ago

> 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. The point is that, due to survivorship bias, it is hard for us to know whether working hard and improving yourself is actually a better path to success than any of the alternative things you could be doing.

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]

pg314 9y ago

> 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.

crusso 9y ago
But if some make it to med school but then don't succeed, how many of those failure cases ended up not working hard enough? Once you have a class of medical students, it's not a lottery system on who succeeds. Short of those who, through no fault of their own, run out of money or have some unfortunate circumstance that takes them out of the program - the ones who succeed seem very likely to have made it on merit of some combination of hard work and intelligence.
- aristus 9y ago
  You'd be surprised. There are several pressures that keep doctor supply low in the US, not least the medical boards staffed by doctors who ahem have obvious moral hazard to constrain supply and maintain their 400k/year income. A close friend of mine is now a cardiologist. As far as I can tell his residency was a three-year hazing ritual / sleep-dep experiment. To top it off, when he was finally done and out in San Francisco visiting us, he got the call to take some final test. The test had to be done the next day and had to be done in person at one of six cities in the country, the closest one being in LA. We scrambled to get him a plane ticket and some sleep. He passed, but excuse me what the actual fuck? That's not character-building. That's straight up institutionalized caprice.
  - crusso 9y ago
    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.

agentgt 9y ago

I don't know what the bias is called but there is this belief that many successful people have or try to bestow that they "did it all themselves" and "you can too". And in generally many people actually believe this. That is the "self made man" story. Many people believe that the starting point doesn't matter. That outside help doesn't matter. That ash to riches is possible and happens often but the reality is this exceedingly not true at all. > Survivorship bias is "Zuck did X, Y and Z, if I do the same then I'll be a multi-billionaire too!" > There's no survivorship bias in going to med school, becoming a specialist and then earning 400k/yr. And if you ask a great majority of these people they will actually believe that hard work was a majority of their success but I firmly believe it is more analogous to as they say in real estate "location location location". Right parents , timing and money probably made the mass difference. Consequently the survivorship bias is even worse because everyones success story is going to have to be fairly different because the vast majority of us come from a wide array of backgrounds and starting points.

setrofim_ 9y ago
> I don't know what the bias is called but there is this belief that many successful people have or try to bestow that they "did it all themselves" and "you can too". This is a combination of egocentric bias[0] and post-hoc rationalization [1] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egocentric_bias https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egocentric_bias [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post_hoc_ergo_propter_hoc https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post_hoc_ergo_propter_hoc

taneq 9y ago

> 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 large part luck played in their success. Exactly. As some guy once said, Taylor Swift telling you to put everything into your dreams of becoming a pop star is like a lotto winner telling you to spend your life savings on lotto tickets (a la the original comic).

ux-app 9y ago
>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 completely unremarkable town and there are loads of millionaires around. I bumped into one recently when I accidentally stumbled onto his property while hiking. Judging by the sprawling estate he's at least in $5mm+ net worth range. What does he do for a living? He owns an earth moving company. That's right, at the ripe age of about 45, he made tons of money moving dirt from one spot to another. Lovely guy too. My friend from high school is also in the millionaire club. We're both from a public school background. Unremarkable back stories in just about every way possible. Now he runs a very successful web agency. He's super smart, hard working and I'm sure that accounts for the majority of his success. My point is that there are loads of millionaires around, even in my little backwater. Far, far more than there are lottery winners. Seems to imply that luck plays a far smaller role in the success of millionaire next door types than simple hard work.
- gk1 9y ago
  You may like reading The Millionaire Next Door. It explains that the majority of millionaires in the US are like those you describe, and not like the flashy movie ones we see in the media. Edit: Link for convenience: https://www.amazon.com/Millionaire-Next-Door-Surprising-Americas/dp/1589795474 https://www.amazon.com/Millionaire-Next-Door-Surprising-Amer...

iplaw 9y ago

It boggles my mind how many people in Dallas are in the $5-50MM net worth range. I am smack in the middle of that range and feel quite unremarkable.

panarky 9y ago

My favorite example of survivorship bias is the US Navy's statistical analysis of returning WW2 planes to determine what parts of the planes received the most damage from anti-aircraft fire. The idea was to selectively add armor to the areas most likely to get hit. But by analyzing returning planes, their sample excluded the planes that were lost. So the better strategy was to add armor to the areas with the least damage instead. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias#/media/File:Survivorship-bias.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias#/media/File:... Now I see survivorship bias everywhere. Retail chains improve their comparable store sales metrics not by actually increasing sales, but by closing stores with declining sales. Money managers and traders with the highest performance often have no special talent, they're just ones who survived.

libertymcateer 9y ago

> Survivorship bias is "Zuck did X, Y and Z, if I do the same then I'll be a multi-billionaire too!" This is also called "cargo cult behavior." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargo_cult#Metaphorical_uses_of_the_term https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargo_cult#Metaphorical_uses_o...

paulcole 9y ago

>Survivorship bias doesn't relate to people who worked hard, improved themselves and now earn 1-10MM/yr. All those people earning 1-10MM/yr? How many of them were born on third base and go around explaining to everyone how they too can hit a triple?

frgtpsswrdlame 9y ago

Actually, I think you are missing the point. >Survivorship bias doesn't relate to people who worked hard, improved themselves and now earn 1-10MM/yr. It absolutely does! Luck and upbringing (which I really consider a subset of luck) are such huge factors in how much money you will make in your life.

optimuspaul 9y ago

I think you are wrong about that. Hard work does not guarantee success. Survivorship bias applies to everything that has a high possibility of failure, which definitely includes med school.

angstrom 9y ago

Thought that was cargo cult. Going through the steps of what was successful in a given situation without understanding the logic behind those steps at the time they were applied or perhaps the reason they worked in the first place assuming luck was not a factor.

pimlottc 9y ago

Er, of course survivorship bias applies - it applies to everything. Not everyone who goes to med school ends up as a high earner, not even all those who graduate. Sure, their success rate is much higher than those who decided to play the lottery instead, but there's always going to be some degree of survivorship bias when the failures are less visible than the successes.

jondubois 9y ago

It's amusing to watch lucky people on HN make comments like this (taking their extreme luck for granted and attributing it to hard work) and then watch them get down-voted by equally hard-working people who have the opposite experience. ... And let's not forget that HN is not an accurate representation of society as a whole (HN itself 'suffers' from survivor bias).

sdflkd 9y ago
> It's amusing to watch lucky people on HN make comments like this (taking their extreme luck for granted and attributing it to hard work) and then watch them get down-voted by equally hard-working people who have the opposite experience. It's less amusing when you realize these same arguments are used against minorities/the disadvantaged to keep them down.

debacle 9y ago

> Survivorship bias is "Zuck did X, Y and Z, if I do the same then I'll be a multi-billionaire too!" That's cargo cult.

jondubois 9y ago

>> There's no survivorship bias in going to med school, becoming a specialist and then earning 400k/yr. Even that is not quite true. You need to have relatively well off parents to pay for your 10 years or so of university. One might be tempted to argue that if you're really smart, you can get a scholarship... But even then, can you really get high enough grades to qualify for that scholarship if you have to keep up a 20 hours per week side job to pay for your rent?

didibus 9y ago

There might be though. There's more to luck then we may think. If the world is truly deterministic, it could be that luck is 100% of it. I can see genetics, parenting, the teachers you had, and a whole of other things playing into even the success of just becoming a doctor. In my case, I'm just lucky that the art I love to make, code, is also a highly paid job. Nothing felt hard to get here, I did it because of the passion I have for it, and I have this passion out of luck.