3 ms·

That's not how survivorship bias works. Some things really do increase the chances of survival. You might as well dismiss life jackets as survivorship bias, bec

by imgabe 5y ago

That's not how survivorship bias works. Some things really do increase the chances of survival. You might as well dismiss life jackets as survivorship bias, because hey, what about all the people who were wearing life jackets and drowned anyway? It's only survivorship bias if you're talking about an unrelated factor that doesn't have any influence on the outcome.

edent 5y ago
There's a difference between necessary and sufficient. Your argument is that it is necessary. My argument is that it is not sufficient. These are two different arguments.
- imgabe 5y ago
  Dismissing things that are necessary because they aren't sufficient is a recipe for failure.
  - carapace 5y ago
    (Not OP) To me it seems they expanded on it rather than dismissing it: > Implicit in this argument is that you need to build the right thing and talk to the right people.
r3un1 5y ago
If I get GP's argument, a more appropriate analogy would be that some life jackets are filled with lead and you can't necessarily tell them apart. That is to say, presenting yourself to the external world carries an inherent risk as well as the potential for reward.
- beaconstudios 5y ago
  But as with leaden life jackets, you can tell them apart. The subset of projects and people that are poison pills can be discerned, so "build the right thing" is more like "don't build the wrong thing, and keep building" where the wrong thing can be avoided the majority of the time. Which is basically the process of gradient descent, aka learning!