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Re:99 bits of unsolicited advice by SaltyBackendGuy on Monday April 26, 2021 @05:57PM (#26948768)
> 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.

Re:99 bits of unsolicited advice by coldtea on Monday April 26, 2021 @06:47PM (#26949285)
On 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".
Re:99 bits of unsolicited advice by nerdponx on Monday April 26, 2021 @08:39PM (#26950244)
But "worked for me" could mean that something worked, or that something didn't work but the good outcome happened anyway.
Re:99 bits of unsolicited advice by nine_k on Monday April 26, 2021 @06:51PM (#26949319)
The entire concept of evolution is built on survivor bias.
Re:99 bits of unsolicited advice by Godel_unicode on Monday April 26, 2021 @10:45PM (#26951349)
No. 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.
Re:99 bits of unsolicited advice by nine_k on Tuesday April 27, 2021 @12:45AM (#26952093)
My point is that the correlation is the only real data we have.
Re:99 bits of unsolicited advice by Godel_unicode on Friday April 30, 2021 @09:29PM (#27001976)
My point is that correlation isn't real data.
Re:99 bits of unsolicited advice by asiachick on Tuesday April 27, 2021 @12:14AM (#26951944)
That'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.
Re:99 bits of unsolicited advice by uoaei on Monday April 26, 2021 @06:57PM (#26949384)
I'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.
Re:99 bits of unsolicited advice by nine_k on Monday April 26, 2021 @08:05PM (#26949956)
No, 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.

Re:99 bits of unsolicited advice by uoaei on Tuesday April 27, 2021 @04:44PM (#26961257)
It is quite literal, and also missing the context of the discussion above.