What is Survivor Bias?
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There’s a famous story from WW2. They were losing planes and saw that planes were coming back with lots of bullet holes in the wings. They added extra armor to the wings, but were losing about the same number of planes. The armor wasn’t making a difference. So they started adding extra armor to the cockpit and engine and they started having more planes return. This ]]kpkis due to survivorship bias.
The planes that were making it back, were only shot in places that a plane can get shot and make it back. So if we add armor to where those returning planes weren’t shot, the future plane would have more armor in the vital places.
If you only look at subjects that survived all the potential sources of failure, you have no idea how you could fail.
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