This is Mike. Mike loves electronic music.
No matter where he looks, he sees successful DJs.
They appear on television, on the front pages of magazines and they are talked about everywhere
on the internet.
Their songs are unavoidable.
Whether on his playlist, in the mall or in the gym.
DJs are everywhere.
There are loads of them and they all seem to be doing well. Motivated by the success
stories of countless DJs, Mike decides he wants to become one as well.
But will he make it big?
Well, the probability of that happening is a fraction above zero.
Like so many others, he will most likely end up in the burial grounds of failed DJs.
For every successful DJ, there are thousands of failed ones.
And most of them don't make it past their one time nightclub gig. But wait a minute.
Mike isn't convinced by this fact.
How can there be thousands of failures, when he can clearly see all the success DJs achieve? Thanks
to the media, success is made more visible than failure, so the burial grounds are hidden
from plain sight. This means that we systematically overestimate our chances of succeeding, because
failures are ignored. This is known as the survivorship bias, and like many others, Mike
has unknowingly fallen pray to it. The survivorship bias is the logical error, concentrating on
the people who made it or "survived" and overlooking those who did not.
Let me explain what I mean by this. After Mike found out about this bias, he decided to do
some digging.
What he noticed shocked him.
One of the examples he found lies in the literary world. For every successful and popular writer,
you can find 100 other writers who publish their books, but whose books never sell.
Behind each one of those, are another 100 who wrote a book, but haven’t found a publisher.
And finally, behind each one of them are yet another 100 whose unfinished manuscripts gather
dust in drawers.
So if you do the math, for 1 successful writer, there are 1 million unsuccessful ones. And
we didn't even count all the people who dream of one day writing a book.
However we only hear about the successful writers and fail to recognize how unlikely
literary success is.
Same goes for pretty much any occupation, whether it's entrepreneurs, athletes, television
actors, beauty models and artists. The media is not interested in digging around in the
burial grounds of the unsuccessful.
Stories of failures aren't interesting, unless it's a successful person that failed.
There's a common misconception floating around the internet: You should focus on the successful
if you wish to become successful yourself.
While there is some truth to that, the survivorship bias is often ignored here. You have probably
seen these types of articles before.
Like, "5 surprising habits all successful people have".
Or, "4 things ultra successful people do differently".
The logic is simple: if it helped them get success, it should help you as well, right? Well
not quite.
When you factor in the survivorship bias, you notice that we're only focusing on the
people that made it, aka survivors.
We're forgetting all the men and women, that have been applying those "5 surprising habits
of the successful people", but are not successful. So while their advice might work for some, it
has to be noted that it won't work for everyone.
We don't even consider that there are probably other elements at play here, one for example:
pure luck.
Like being at the right place at the right time or having connections with key people.
Those are just some factors that are often disregarded. Let's take a look at Bill Gates
and Steve Jobs.
They both dropped out of college and started their own companies which were a huge success.
Because they both made it without a college education, it's sometimes suggested that passionate
and smart people should do the same.
Logically this advice makes sense.
If they've achieved it, what's stopping you from achieving the same thing, if you follow
their footsteps, right?
The problem with this logic, again, is that survivorship bias is not factored in. You are
ignoring all the thousands of other students who had a huge business idea, who also dropped
out of college, but failed with their company.
Now where is their success? This is why you should take successful people's advice with
a grain of salt.
They are thousands of people who do the same things as they do, but it doesn't necessarily
work out for them.
It's just that you don't hear about all those people. But even if you don't notice those
who failed, it doesn't mean they're not there.
So next time you're analyzing data, it’s important to ask yourself what kind of information
you don’t have.
Sometimes the full picture is hidden.If you only focus on the winners advice, which might
be "to take more risks", you're ignoring all the losers who say that "you should be more
careful".
I'm not saying that you shouldn't take advice from other successful people.
Just to keep the survivorship bias in mind, whenever you do so.
This way you can make much more rational and logical decisions. Also I'm not seeking to
discourage anyone from following their passion and dreams, just trying to show you that not
everything is black and white.If you're wondering what happened to Mike, well, he's not a successful
DJ, yet.
But he's determined to keep on trying.
Even though he knows how unlikely it is for him to succeed, he's still following his passion
for music.
While keeping the survivorship bias in mind he's now learning from both successful and
failed DJs. Success isn't everything and should not be the end goal.
But if you find something you love doing and stick to it, while constantly improving, then
that will ultimately lead you to the success you seek. I hope you enjoyed today's video
and if you did, please hit that like button.
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