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> Advice like these are not laws. They are like hats. If one doesn’t fit, try another. Lists like these are full of survivor bias. In fact, it's baked into it.
by SaltyBackendGuy 5y ago
> Advice like these are not laws. They are like hats. If one doesn’t fit, try another.
Lists like these are full of survivor bias. In fact, it's baked into it.
- coldtea 5y agoOn the other hand, survivor bias, when it's not about "to make it big, start as a millionaire heir" can also be another name for "worked for me, so there's at least a single living proof that it can work".
- nerdponx 5y agoBut "worked for me" could mean that something worked, or that something didn't work but the good outcome happened anyway.
- nine_k 5y agoThe entire concept of evolution is built on survivor bias.
- uoaei 5y agoI'm not sure what you meant by this but it comes across as a quip attempting to be witty and piercing but completely missing the point.
- nine_k 5y agoNo, it's quite literal. Evolution is the process that preserves those who survived and left progeny, and chaffes away those who don't. The only measure of success in it is the survival. It does not mean that attempts to make some rational models is worthless; quite the contrary. Of course, there are many who tried things like these and failed; maybe many more than those who prospered. But there are those who tried something opposite, and fewer of them, if any, have prospered. So these inclinations of prosperous people have something to them, though not a guarantee. If you take many such accounts of successful people and correlate them, you will find certain similarities; they, of course, are pretty well-known.
- uoaei 5y agoIt is quite literal, and also missing the context of the discussion above.
- Godel_unicode 5y agoNo. Evolution is built on favorable mutations being preserved (e.g. the tautology that things which cause life to continue cause life to continue). Survivorship bias is arbitrarily associating traits that survivors have with success. It's the difference between correlation and causation.
- nine_k 5y agoMy point is that the correlation is the only real data we have.
- Godel_unicode 5y agoMy point is that correlation isn't real data.
- asiachick 5y agoThat's conflating two concepts. Survivor bias means assuming what you did is "why" you survived. Evolution is survivor results. Survivors stay alive but no one is claiming anything about why they stayed alive, only that they did.