Business Advice Plagued by Survivor Bias

Re:Business Advice Plagued by Survivor Bias by caffeine on Monday August 17, 2009 @06:17PM (#769249)

Oddly, self-help gurus seem to enjoy the opposite phenomenon (i.e. those who can't, teach self-help seminars).

I remember at one point this guy Richard(?) Kiyosaki had a book "Rich Dad, Poor Dad." In it, you basically found out that Kiyosaki was (a) lying his tits off or (b) a terrible investor. You found out that he'd been bankrupt, and had run several companies into the ground. That he invested in mining companies in Russia whose value would swing 50% up and down from day-to-day - but that this didn't bother him... Wacko.

Yet, somehow, the book was a total phenomenon and made the guy huge amounts of money.

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Re:Business Advice Plagued by Survivor Bias by smartbear on Tuesday August 18, 2009 @03:13PM (#771219)

I agree there's too much advice from people who haven't been there themselves.

My own article shows that advice from people who HAVE been there (like me) is still suspect, but at least it's MORE interesting than people who have ONLY failed.

Failing, learning, and then succeeding just feels like a better place than just failing, SAYING you learned, and then teaching.

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Re:Business Advice Plagued by Survivor Bias by rjurney on Tuesday August 18, 2009 @08:59PM (#771827)

I bet success does feel better than failure. And not because you get more credibility, either :)

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