Survivorship Bias

The tendency to focus on successful examples while overlooking failures, leading to false conclusions about what causes success.

Failures are often invisible — failed companies shut down, failed products disappear. We only see what survived, creating a distorted picture of reality.

• Studying only successful entrepreneurs and concluding that dropping out of college leads to success.
• Believing old buildings were better made because only the sturdy ones are still standing.
• Thinking a specific diet works because you only hear from people who succeeded.

• Always ask: 'Where are the failures? What happened to those who didn't make it?'
• Look for data on failure rates alongside success stories.
• Be skeptical of advice based solely on successful examples.
• Seek out the full dataset, including those who tried and failed.