In WWI... at the start of the war, the soldiers didn't wear helmets... and in the infirmaries they quickly realize that most injures were in the top of the head from artillery fire... so the army quickly started issuing those classic WWI helmets everyone knows. The problem was that instead of decreasing the number of head injures, the infirmaries experience an almost 5 times increase in the number of soldiers with head injures. Seeing that some (stupid) people in high command though they should prohibit the use of the helmet since it was clearly worsening the situation. Of course (smart) people realized that the number of head injuries increase, because before the helmets, those people were being killed, instead of just injured.
+dgreyz - Not at all. It just makes sense to only remember the old movies if they were good (or extraordinarily bad). Conversely, if you watched a bad movie yesterday or even one year ago, you probably still remember it. I think it's really a matter of being unable to remember all the movies you watched in your life. And if we are talking about old as in "before I was born", then surely only the good ones made it.
+dgreyz I think it might be nostalgia as well. I usually find new, innovative music, to be better than old stuff. I almost never listen to older music, at age 38. czcams.com/video/cmUR7bVahK4/video.html
Yeah and it frustrates me so much when people say "The good ol days" when really 50 years ago there was 5x as much poverty, many times more war, starvation etc. But unfortunately must people don't care about facts even if they say they do, they want to cling to their rose-coloured glasses of their personal anecdotal experience
Pretty much all of the "classic" films from the 60s and 70s are utter shit. People just think they're good because they're told to think they're good or they're remembering them with nostalgia.
"I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein’s brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops." - Stephen Jay Gould
This implies that people who go to community college aren't as intelligent as people who go to some prestige college. Most people who go to community college do so because of the college credit system. They do community college for about 1-2 years and then transfer to some University to decrease their expenses. Not everyone grows up with a silver spoon.
I mean ever since I was in junior high I thought about what kind of a world would it be had the Nazis won. What kind of things would we believe to be good etc. And then of course how bad were the winners of WWII.
I think this every time I see someone post one of those "We rode in the backs of pickup trucks that ran on leaded petrol, and our mothers smoked and drank through pregnancy, and we survived!" Well, yeah..._you_ survived. How many didn't?
I don't really like adding this to this (surprisingly nice for CZcams) comment pool, but I just wanted to say that I guess this would apply to questions raised by some concerning intelligent design, saying "why is the eye so perfect", or "why are animals so perfect for their environment" when the simple answer is "they survived". It's something I thought of for a while, and didn't know exactly how to say it, like the furthest I got was, if I see "why do animals want to reproduce", I think "why does dust want to gather in corners". Thanks for the vid :)
Likewise, the common suggestion: "it can't be a coincidence that the Earth is exactly the right distance from the sun for life as we know it to exist.". The answer of course, is that if the Earth were at a different distance, we wouldn't be here asking that question. So of all the trillions of planets in the universe, only those at "exactly the right distance" will end up with conscious beings capable of asking why they are at exactly the right distance.
Matt Coller That doesn't necessarily mean there is no creator though, right? It means it could be another possibility, but it doesn't negate the possibility of there being a creator. Possiblity#1 An unlikely outcome came about through means we do not fully understand yet. Where did matter come from? Was it always there? How did matter become life? Possiblity#2 A creator created the universe as we know it. If at your house you hear the doorbell ring. It could be that someone rang it, or the wind did something or the wires were loose enough to touch. If someone then followed the sound of the doorbell by shouting "Open the door", you can be certain which option it was. In the same way, if the creator is sending messages through messengers (Noah, Moses, Jesus, Muhammad, etc), we should evaluate those messages to see if they have merit then make our decision.
You're absolutely right '@@qutuz9495' that this doesn't prove a negative. So yes, it remains a possibility that there's a man in the sky who created the universe 13.8 billion years ago, but waited the first 9.2 billion years before creating the solar system (perhaps fitting in a few rough drafts first?). Then waited another 4 billion years before creating any multi-cellular life, and finally humans with intelligence only a few thousand years ago. And apparently he still has such low self-esteem that he now expects all those humans to spend all their time (and money) singing songs about how great he is, otherwise he will throw them into eternal damnation... I do indeed agree that remains a possibility.
from 6:18 to 7:50 hit close to home. I always blamed myself for not trying hard enough, and then tried harder. When success didn't happen, I blamed myself again and tried even harder. And then... there was no success. All the successful people shove their success in your face and claim they "worked harder than everybody else". This made me spiteful, hateful and very depressed. The thought "what if they are right and I still should try harder" got me back in the working loop. Learning about survivor bias puts my mind to ease. I did work very hard. I just haven't gotten lucky yet.
This is known as the just world fallacy, the idea that the world is good and fair, wealthy people are wealthy because of their hard work and poor people are poor because they are lazy. If you look at real world data you will see that some people become wealthy through good fortune and there are plenty of people that work hard in essential services for mediocre wages. The reality is that trying to improve yourself and putting the work in will likely enhance your chances of doing well in life, so it is a good thing to do, but it will not guarentee anything. Much of what happens in life is probabilistic in nature. Many years ago I suffered a traumatic head injury in a road accident, with the aid of superb hospital treatment my life was saved and I have no long term side effects. Any slight perturbation to the variables in that accident could have easily resulted in my death or debilitating brain damage instead.
We also have to look at it from the other angle: if you stop working hard, you are almost guaranteed to never succeed. I personally look at it this way: people that have found success have all worked hard long enough for it. But How long and how hard you need to work to achieve success depends on luck.
95% of 'success' is having the 'right [or is that wrong] people' to compare with, and/or support you [right people]. Nearly all the very wealthy folks started wealthy (family wealth and a solid education/status base). Real success often comes when you define it in your own terms, rather than letting others 'suggest' what's good for you. Be you own survivor. Warm bed, roof over you head, food on te table, and a friend or two.
I feel this. I strongly believed that if you work hard in any workplace you would get somewhere. Probably for a decade. The answer to my experiences with that was no. Actually a lot small places doing what your employer tells you is like pouring gas on a fire. I would have found this hard to believe but you have to remember, people are unpredictable (they might need to meet personal needs you can't interpret) and your financially dependent on a person meaning your job security and future is unpredictable.. It might be controversial to say it but a lot of places I have worked seemed like a kiss or slap system. Usually employers would be married men adjusting to their age which is hard, I get this. But would resent you for reasons out of your control (maybe being younger or gender - don't come at me) And the situation turns into a set up where you can't really win. I understand reassurance seeking but it's like suddenly your employer is a resentful spouse. It's the good qualities you have that they reacted to as a threat and needed to put you down to tolerate being near you. I blamed myself everytime and worked harder to make it worse I thought it would be just a few places by chance... But it seems to be kind of consistent. But when you think about people,it makes sense. Don't treat what people say as it's complete logic. It's based on feelings. And those feelings will be projected onto you 😉. I am going to work for 5 months and continue upgrading so I can put work towards something that can't evaporate. And now I'm coping through a CZcams comment 🥲 my face hurts
Music is a big one. There are always people that say "music was better in the 60s" for example. Look at The Beatles, Bob Dylan, Pink Floydd etc. Personal bias aside, there is also the fact that there were also millions of other terrible crummy bands of the same genre that didn't survive until today. Loads of failed attempts and the only ones that survive until today were the ones that were good enough to be succesful then.
+Champagne Stegosaur People also like to leave out that musicians are generally more skilled today than they were several decades ago. It's just a matter of resources really. I can study an instrument the old way 100% of the time learning the scales and patterns and how notes interact through trial and error, or I can sprinkle in techniques of various successful musicians. It hurts the egos of the 40 something's but in todays music scene most of the old "legends" are average at best skill wise. It's surprising to me that some people genuinely expect their glory days to be the peak of music, as if humans wouldn't progress as they always do with everything else.
Nope that is not the case for music. Looking at the top 10 of today and the 70s, today's is full of shit. And I m not comparing the worst of today with the best of then. I m comparing the best of both times. And ofcourse it's not magical or unexplained- there are historic and social reasons behind it.
Fevos Man No, you're just flat out wrong. "looking at the top 10," oh, you mean a list based on popularity that has literally nothing to do with skill level? This is exactly what I was talking about. 90% of people disregard skill and just talk from a place of personal taste, and then they claim things that they like more are better. That's just not how it works. You're opinion does not help or hinder someone's actual ability.
One of the best versions of survivor bias in my eyes is when the French started using helmets in WW1. When they were issued to the troops head injuries reported skyrocketed. Many generals wanted to end the program after looking at the numbers. Someone realized however head injuries skyrocketed because without the helmets those men would have been listed as dead instead of injured evacuated to an aid station.
I imagine the few people who understand english and encountered you in the street, the ones who don't know look strange at you but think you are making a vlog about the preserved historical area of the city, those who know english otherwise will see a vlogger think the same thing and then hear "if a cat falls from the twentyeth floor it just splats" and get more confused than a bee in an elevator.
I am reasonably successful by American society"s standards. I got a great post-secondary education. I am a physician. I worked hard. Even so, the underlying reasons for my success remain that I was born into a home with two loving parents who were college educated and stayed together. They taught me that education is important and that I should never be resting on my laurels. They achieved financial stability and created a home full of emotional stability for my brother and me. They fostered an environment where I was actually expected to go to university. I am also a straight, white, male who speaks native American dialect. Would I have been successful based on hard work alone? Maybe. I was given so many lucky breaks that I really can't claim it on my ambition and intellect alone.
But the fact that you recognize your luck allows you to make better decisions/rule. I'm unfortunately not white and privilege, raised as a Hispanic in a predominantly black underprivileged neighborhood but I am relatively successful amongst millennial minorities in America. I too attribute that to my stable loving home, an attribute sometimes uncommon amongst many minorities in America. But I can still recognize the shred of privilege that I was provided. This allows me to used judgment in an unbiased and considerate way. And hopefully I can use my success to better the neighborhood that tho marginalized and disenfranchised, provided me with all the resources I needed to be successful.
I think this is a pointless observation. Everything single thing about us is due to nature or nurture. You are successful because you are intelligent and worked hard. Technically, you cannot take credit for either of those things or for your success, because you're intelligent and you work hard due to your inherited genes and the way you were brought up, but what's the point of stating this. All you're doing is allowing people to blame others for their failings. Unsuccessful people already blame everyone before themselves - everyone more successful than them, the middle class, the establishment, the system, white people, politicians, etc. - they don't need you to give them another scapegoat.
I have a Black Hispanic U.S. American cousin born to an illegal immigrant Dominican mother who had to work her arse off to make ends meet doing underpaid work and they lived in a Spanish-speaking slum, he is a lawyer now... All he had was a rich (overseas) father who occasionally sent him money and that was enough to be successful.
I think being aware of survivor bias is also important in developing a sense of humility. understanding that there are many genius-level people who were unlucky enough to be born in a place that offers little to no social mobility or education, or who have experienced things in their lives that significantly impact their natural talents and that despite that, you were lucky enough to not be subject to such circumstances and succeed is a powerful thing.
This is capitalisms fault, while the issue isnt unique to capitalism, this system has also not improved much from feudalism for the majority of the world. i.e. billions are still in poverty which is a bit different from the billions in poverty b4 capitalism. Social services, education and opportunities are not something left to chance in a certain system of organising the economy and society that starts with the letter C
Also veritasium and you talking about luck and success is just an effect of having your (plural) whole lives. It's a symptom of the system that everyone will start to associate it with terms like natural and life but its entirely a human construct. We can provide basic necessities for the entire population of the earth but we dont bcus of thid artificial system of organisation.
The survivor Bias is actually something I think about a lot. Especially when it comes to competitive environments and how people keep asking the winners how to improve. They might not know themselves what actually made them improve, they just believe that something made them improve.
Being aware of the survivor bias is EXTREMELY important. It can save you a lot of headache, as well as coming to the wrong conclusions! It's especially useful when combating the bullshit "meritocracy" talking point that is being pushed by billionaires who parasitize on society, thinking that they've earned it.
Lol yeah. Just because some dude with a mansion and car tells you to chase your dreams, doesn't mean you should. You can end up wasting your entire life chasing it and achieving nothing, and losing everything.
And it's in your boss's interest for you to believe that going above and beyond will earn you a reward, or a seat at the table. That might be the case in some situations, but in a lot of cases they will just exploit that extra work by making it the standard for everyone and not actually giving anyone any meaningful reward.
What you said after the 7:00 minute mark really makes sense. People will always look toward "successful" people and think that's the way they can be successful. When in reality there are no definite ways to become successful. Success always involves luck.
True. The hard work and determination are super important as well. But the part about perseverance, if you think about it, is just for giving luck enough time to manifest, if that makes any sense.
@@leodahvee Well it's not necessarily true. It's just a way of looking at things. Say, if luck has a 10% chance of happening, there's a higher chance of it happening over a period of 1 year instead of 1 month. For example if you run a business, there's a higher chance to find the right client in a period of 1 year instead of 1 month. I'm not talking about luck as in a "magical" thing that is out of our control, I'm talking about it as if it were something that we create, through perseverance and hard work. There could still be an aspect of chance to it, of course, but a lot of it is still in our control.
For Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Zuckerberg, most of the "self-made" tech billionaires, sure they had good ideas and worked hard but 100% of them also had a rich relative or contact or some kind of money for nothing, that got them started. That's how to become successful, have good ideas and work hard, and get your rich relative to bankroll you, like they all did.
@@jessicalee333 (sorry for my grammar) their good ideas? are you sure? many nameless scientists and artists work for them, they aren't the one inventing and designing or even giving the ideas. I think it's kinda wrong for people who only are the boss to get most of the money because they are the boss. there is definitely something wrong with billionaires existing. no matter how smart you are, having so much wealth isn't something that someone deserves. there are many talented people out there who are better. chance plays a very important rule in investment despite what they(billionaires) tell you. you can try hard or be a genius and follow the same path as they did but there is a very low chance of you getting billionaire too but yes you can get rich.
I think this is one of the main reasons why people say that music used to be better than it is today. All the great songs are to be remembered and the awefull ones are to be forget, that leaves you with nothing but the great songs.
I know, it’s kind of late, but I think that explains nostalgia pretty well. You (mostly) remember the good stuff, that’s why you think everything was better in the past.
@@FlorianBriegel not rly true, i used to enjoy listening to the radio in 2009 and 2010 but after those years music has gotten to bad to enjoy radio so it's clearly something else
@@DiceDecides This is also kinda late, but I think this general opinion, that music was better in the past, is partially down to the fact that you're more impressionable when you're younger. With music ever evolving, things on the radio from when you were younger tend to be more to your personal liking, and music on the radio today will generally be less to your personal liking. I'm not saying what you're saying isn't right as I believe you, I have a similar feeling. I'm also not excluding survivor bias from being a factor as you will tend to remember listening to the radio as when every song suited you and not that one day when one song they kept playing was one you hated. I could go rambling on, but there are so many factors that cause this phenomenon, simply discrediting one because you no longer enjoy listening to the radio isn't right. One simple fact is that you're not the first (by a long shot) to dislike new music and prefer older music. This has been a permanent theme for centuries now, pretty much since music was widely connected across countries. A lot of children listening to the radio today will be saying the same things in 10, 15, 20 years, just like many people did before them. So really, unless music has been permanantly getting worse since becoming widely connected across countries (which technically is possible, but I doubt) one cannot simply say that music has gotten worse, because people who enjoyed music on the radio years ago, no longer do today. Thanks for coming to my TED talk, I guess I did ramble after all...
That last point you made really hit home. I have a brother that has been incredibly lucky and has relied on his luck throughout his life. He is now at a point in his life that he no longer needs luck. He's a totally financially independent living the life of Riley. Yet I've always worked hard (and still do) but he believes I'm lazy, otherwise I'd be just as well off as him. I could tell you so many stories of where he had unimaginable good fortune yet he just took it for granted.
Old folks always say stuff like " In my day, we didn't baby our kids so much. We just let em go play outside by themselves all day. We smoked a pack a day and didn't wear seat belts and we didn't give a shit about the environment and look at how we turned out, just fine." Yeah those of you who happened to have survived. Those who didn't make it aren't around to tell us about how shitty it was back then.
Plenty of kids were maimed or killed by lawn darts, yet old people act like lawn darts were harmless because they were more competent as children. Nope, survivor bias.
What that says is that we have learned to live better lives over the last 100 years. The thing about babying kids may be because 60 or 70 years ago, few people owned cars so roads were very lightly populated with motor traffic and children could go out and play without the parents worrying their kid would be run over. That isn't the case today given the car-centric urban planning that has happened in some Western countries from the 1970's onward.
What you said a the end, how the people who succeed make the rules, reminds me of my struggles as an amateur artists. A lot of the advice I get from pros ... just doesn't work, and I realized why: they have other parts of the information that they just expect people to have, because they have it. Same goes for my skills with a computer. It's odd to me when people can't solve a basic tech problem that I only had to google. When it's obvious what is going on is that all the people I know, who do what I do, have that skill.
Very late to comment on this. But what are those people expecting others to have? I'm also a practicing artist. I think it would help me a lot to know.
The other cognitive bias at play there is attribution error. They ATTRIBUTE their success to some particular skill or action when, in fact, they were in the right place at the right time, or knew someone helpful, or they're attractive so they got noticed
Some things I’ve learned as an adult 1. Anyone living in a developed country has experienced at least some luck 2. Fair or not, anyone living in a developed country can save 10 percent of their income. This is a game changer. Sacrificing sleep to work extra, or sacrificing fast food to just eat a can of beans may be required, but this makes a persons financial situation change dramatically - and yes, it’s going to be a lot harder for some that for others but it works, and there’s a certain amount of fairness in the fact that you have the opportunity to save money in the first place without outlaws or thugs robbing your safe 3. You can always make your situation better, even if just a little. Life is definitely unfair, and luck definitely plays a huge role. But it’s not the only thing, and just because life is unfair, that is no reason to throw in the towel. There’s still some stability in our modern age and that goes a long way when you’re trying to dig yourself out of a hole
There are some holes which one cannot dig themselves out from. Also, if someone runs into ENOUGH bad luck in a *row*... waaay too often.... waaaay too much--they're done. As in, you wouldn't even hear their input, because they were *SO* unsuccessful, no one knows about them, has never heard of them, and in a certain sense ... they really 'never existed'. Sort of like myself. Almost exactly, actually.
DEEP ! ! For about 10 years now I have been telling people "Just because the outcome was good; does NOT mean you made the right Choices!" Same idea .... just because you survived - does not mean you made all the right choices...My background; Probably more successful than most of my high school class, but I can easily see that, at LEAST, four major "Lucky Events" were strongly responsible for my success.
I'm glad that you took a moment to highlight your point at the end, yet saddened that you (rightly) needed to. Yes, "this is the Internet", but for some reason my mind keeps telling me that the kind of people that watch your videos are people interested in "thinking", and that even though we're all still learning, there really shouldn't be a need to clarify that point. Thanks for the video - I'm glad that you decided to do what you do.
+Wildepix Well, if you think about it, I doubt his intent is to tell people who already understand his point what his point was. His intention or hope is probably to tell people who *don't* get the point, and make them think about it.
+Wildepix The point at the end would of great value for people only starting to watch him with much skepticism, cause some friend or etc mentioned to them how much they enjoy watching this channel and all the good.
+Wildepix Disclaimers are worthwhile no matter what - in this video his idea that he would have been misinterpreted may look like asspull, but in others not - and as a creator you have no idea how clear you really were (to your extremely mixed audience). If it becomes good habit and doesn't interfere with the rest of the video - then go for it.
While I was familiar with the concept, I was not familiar with its proper name and with the specific examples. I find such videos valuable for "thinking" audience as well, because now we know the name of the phenomenon, know some examples, and have a well made and different video to refer to when we meet this phenomenon in day to day life.
I watched like 20 inspirational motivating videos. And then i watched this, it wiped all the motivation i had. Thanks now i can sleep without feeling bad, it's 2am
And he was an arsehole. What's your point? That you remember the name of some jerk, but there are thousands of amazing people's names we'll never remember?
Sir, I merely have two things to say to you after viewing this new video: 1. I LOVE the way you state the conclusion about the survivor's bias coloring policymaking (and social judgement on others in general). Every scientist worth her first congress paper is cautious about this bias in her research, when relying on data that are randomly provided by an uncontrolled experiment. Yet, so few of them actually transfer this wisdom to their everyday life and take it into account in the way they judge different components of their society ! 2. I always loved your "rambling" videos, and the laid-back and spontaneous atmosphere they convey. It was only when I started doing pedagogical videos myself, for my own students, that I realized how WICKEDLY DIFFICULT it is to conduct a long, technical and entertaining monologue like yours in a single uncut take, that does not end up looking or sounding like a big mess ! To me, this is the pedagogical equivalent of stand-up comedy ! I hope to get there myself in ... say, ten more years of experience with the medium ! And I then leave with a more general "Hats off": My teaching physics in universities has been profoundly changed in the past five years by your example as a science popularizer (and by that of a few other fellow vloggers, whom you certainly know too). Thank you for unknowingly helping me improve my teaching skills ! :-)
Great video, Derek! I wonder if Survivor Bias can also account for the missing links when plotting out the evolution of humans. Perhaps the evolutionary human precursors didn't evolve to human beings in a linear fashion like we thought but in a very branched out fashion with varying types of humanoids co-existing on earth, but because we only found the humanoids that inhabited/managed to be trapped in swamps, ice, caves, or whatever preserving media/habitat they became fossilized in, our picture of human evolution is all wrong and somewhat incomplete. Perhaps there were a plethora of other humanoids living in areas not condusive to fossilization/preservation.
I was told that the civilized humans always cremated their dead. So only rogue humans didn't get their bones burned to ash when they died. Also recycling efforts and use of biodegradable materials were more effective so there are less remnants of those early humans for us to study. _DNA is the remnant._
You could say that survivor bias probably gave us the conclusion that we were cavemen. While most of our ancestors probably slept under the night sky or impromptu shelters.
People who have survived suffering may have recovered by rationalizing the suffering and not realizing how many people died or became disabled from the same suffering. Then they feel entitled to judge others for looking at a bad situation realistically, for being earlier in the recovery process, or even for having more risk factors such as racial marginalization. Many judgmental survivors become predators, themselves.
Some people want to meet their favourite actors, actresses, singers and so on. And I am like: "I wish I had an opportunity to have a lunch with Derek and just listen to whatever he tells"
I saw this video some years ago, and I can't emphasize enough how many times it's been useful to me. The Survivor Bias often disguises a fallacy and due to its counter-intuitive nature it is hard to pick up on it if you've never been exposed to it.
This is a very interesting bias. I am quite interested in all cognitive biases and logical fallacies and am in the process of creating a cognitive bias training on my channel through a series of easily-digestible videos. Thanks :D
Survivor bias has a big role in media as well. It's easy to say, for example, that popular music in the 80's (or whichever era) was better composed and more meaningful because the great ones are going to be remembered. If you're just comparing Kashmir or Hotel California to the first thing that pops up on your radio there's probably going to be no comparison. Look back in 20 years and see which songs people are still talking about, and compare those instead.
Looking at your avatar pic I'm wondering what effect mail would have on cat falling survivability. As for music though, rose colored glasses. People always seem to think the crap they listened to growing up was amazing.
+Pounce Baratheon there were a lot of excelent songs written in... well.. forever..., which wouldn't be quite likeable if you didn't understand the frame of reference behind them. I mean, music is a very structured art: you need to consider harmony, rythm, length, rhyme, etc.... so if you compose a song that breaks with the known pace of say rock&roll, some people won't consider that "likeable".... which doesn't mean it is a _bad_ song. and there's lots of modern songs that are _popular_ that still follow the pattern of breaking with the establishment, but that doesn't make them _good_ songs. I guess the survivor (the constant) in all this, is the people's preference. is it likeable? it's popular. is it not likeable? it's not popular.
The quality is amazing! You've mastered the vlogs that old CZcams use to be abundant with-that feeling of being right there with the vlogger and a very enjoyful, personal experience despite thousands of miles apart. (speaking of survivor bias when I refer to old CZcams I mean those that were very successful and garnered a reputation for their vlogs such charlie Mcdonnell, ZeFrank, Tyler Oakley, etc.). Not to mention all of your messages are such great introspective and interspective themes that I think we can all learn from and has helped me make a little more sense of this world that is sometimes very confusing so THANK YOU and enjoy KOREA
I personally know people who consider themselves "hard workers" - who make very poor decisions, and so put themselves in bad situations. They don't see it that way, but from the outside it seems obvious. And these people do it repeatedly, and then insist the whole world is against them. Even when they do stumble across good luck, their poor decisions negate any benefit they could have seen from it. In my opinion, it takes hard work, good decision making, AND luck in order to be successful.
+kyawhitesapphire But what people see as luck is often times the result of being aware of opportunities. It's another kind of survivor bias, where we only have data on the people who had an opportunity to get rich and took it. We don't have any data on the people, who didn't see that opportunity or didn't want to take the chances associated with it. Therefore, the select few, who were always looking for opportunities and always ready to get into are not necessarily lucky, since you always keep your options open and look for new opportunities, it's logical that you will be the one who gets more opportunities to succeed.
+naphackDT you don't seem to get it at all... of course it's not pure luck, and of course there are people who does it completely wrong, but of the people who make it, there are many others that does almost the exact same thing and also have the same mindset but with other outcomes. Of course one can do a lot of things to mitigate who much luck influences things, but it's still always there. And not calling it luck, is like calling a dice roll for not being luck either. I mean, if you really look at it, it's just physics and logics... there is no luck... but yet there are. Also, even when not considering luck. The big picture is still influenced by survivor bias. If you don't see that after this video... then I guess there is really no helping... (replying with "sometimes it's not like X" after a long explanation of something like that is like saying that a small and really rare exception really makes a difference and actually changes anything about the larger statement (even if the exception is real and really exists... which I'm not saying that it is for that matter)... and also, it truly makes you sound like you are rejecting it... if that was not your intention, try reading what you said again and see what it really sonuds like from someones else's perspective )
+kyawhitesapphire Agree with everything you said, just like to add that education / information is really key here. Good decisions can only be made with information. A balanced healthy person, through education, will probably make the correct decisions.
Love your work! Really feel like you would benefit from a 360 camera for 2Veritasium while you're blogging, could be interesting with some of the amazing places you go to.
+Cameron Gee I actually never liked 360 video, it forces me to have to watch the same thing 3-4 times to make sure I didn't miss anything. For 360 video, you can't watch him speak if you want to observe his surroundings (and vice versa), at which point he might as well just do narration anyway.
I have watched this for the first time in 2016 and it has made me a more humble person over the last three years. This was such a defining video for my look on society and success. Thank you Derek!
I had a discussion with some friends about survivor bias. If I recall correctly, one of my friends mentioned that she was tired of hearing people complaining that "they don't make movies like they used to," comparing "classic" films with full array of contemporary films. My friend mentioned that there were a lot of bad movies that were came out during the olden days, but those ones unsurprisingly fell into obscurity, leaving only a select batch of older movies to be considered good enough and timeless enough to endure to the present day.
i wish i could articulate my thoughts as well as you do in your videos. very inspirational work you're doing. keep it up! (i realize the video is 3 years old, but applies to all your videos) such a pleasure to watch!
An interesting example of survivor bias is the first mover advantage. This was thought to be a real thing, where the first company to enter a new field would dominate it, based on the study of a number of industrial fields, finding that the dominant company was also the oldest company. However, later study found that there were plenty of examples where there were earlier entrants who simply hadn't survived, so the real advantage was to the first survivor, not the first mover.
I'd say this depends on how long that first company can remain a monopoly. If there's only one company that has a monopoly for multiple years they 1: can grow their user base quite a lot before anyone else even gets the chance. And 2: can develop and innovate a LOT before anyone else even enters the market. A good example is VRChat. A game that had a 5~6 year head-start on any of the other social VR games. And it shows in the user numbers. VRC has 30k+ daily users on average, while the closest other social VR game (not counting roblox as I couldn't find any data on average users per day for VR) has 100 or so average daily users.
In WWI the armies noticed that the number of head injuries treated increased when they started requiring the soldiers to wear steel helmets. It took a while for somebody to figure out that there were more men getting treated for head wounds because there were less of them dying before they could get treatment.
+Jim Fortune Specifically, the soldiers were getting more injuries because the helmets allowed more of them to survive shrapnel, increasing injuries but decreasing loss of life.
+Jim Fortune Thats funny, I heard a similar tale of that story but my friend attributed it to soldiers having a greater sense of imperviousness when they put on a helmet.
According to Indy Neidell in "The Great War" series on You Tube, that was what the higher ups in the British Army first thought, and they had almost decided to get rid of helmets until someone did a little checking.
+alphie k Technically you're both wrong. It's a GoPro feature, called "Superview", but it's essentially a fish eye lens effect. It's correctable with some pretty simple editing though.
+Jebidah Well, I'm sure you can talk on the street, it's not a cemetary. It's probably there for Mobilephone music busting douchebags, or yelling kids.
I just love your work. I have for so long, but this video... WOW ! Amazing ! There are people making decisions all over the world that would benefit from watching this video ! Thanks, you are awesome !
Ah, revisiting an old favourite. This was the very first video to impress me enough to convince me to subscribe. I'd seen other Veritasium videos but this was the one that finally convinced me. I've since subscribed to many CZcamsrs but I always remember my first.
I can relate to what your saying .I have graduated from my university with bachelor degree in chemical engineering in four years and i am the first on my class and i am unemployed in my degree for two years now . funny how the world works Living in a third world country My dream is to immigrate to Canada Working on my IELTS Pray for me
I wish I could subscribe to your channel a million times, every video is so insightful and interesting, I think you're truly one of the best science communicators, and I look forward to seeing your content for a long time.
People I know always say things like "I used to ride in the back of a pickup truck and I'm fine". I always hated this sentiment, low sample size and survivor bias.
Also, I love your walk with camera talks, and you (Derek) always talk about topics I myself think about a lot and consider interesting, thank you for them.
***** Except that the losing tickets don't just get a lot less attention, they disappear completely. Just by having all your ancestors survive to reproductive age, you've already won one lottery. :p
Not how I would have worded it, to sum up if you were confused: For every person who makes it big, there are millions of people who worked just as hard and failed, but you never hear about them because the one person who made it big gets all the media. Then when the person who made it big is asked how to succeed, he says "Work hard" and that's all very well, but he doesn't know about the millions of others who also worked just as hard as he did, but failed.
+Isaak van Daalen There is one more factor, people often times forget. Working hard alone won't do you any good, if you aren't looking for opportunities. If you are looking for opportunities to make money and flexible enough to consider any kind of opportunity, there will always be the one big chance for a breakthrough, if you just look hard enough. When referring to successful businessmen, people generally call this "luck".
naphackDT A bit depressing to realise that your future (or past) may depend upon luck or something outside of your control. Then again if you could control everything life would be pretty boring. Also to anyone thinking of just giving up now, don't. Just because your future could depend on luck doesn't mean you can't still work hard. If you work hard and get a good education, luck has a much better chance of falling on you than if say you were working part-time for a minimum wage job.
What you say is true and it's because people forgot the other key ingredient which is talent. What these successful people really mean is "I'm extremely talented and I worked hard", but to avoid coming across as arrogant, they just say "I worked hard". Untalented people then hear this, work hard themselves, don't succeed and then blame the system and claim the world is stacked against them or they conclude that the successful person must have just got lucky.
@@silverhawkroman What? I really wonder what you're trying to get at with your comment, since the guy didn't say anything about wanting less of something. Also just fyi he posted this 2 years ago so he might not respond.
I really like the way you talk to the camera. It feels like we're with you in the streets. And it makes the all thing easier to follow (not like the guys from SciShow for example who look like they recite their texts and talk too fast). Great content, once again !
It's interesting, correlating Veritasium's rant on "Learned Helplessness" and this rant on "Survivor Bias", attributing successful people as more often products of luck or circumstance. Almost two contradictory messages. The message here was "At the end of the day, listening to successful people explain why they're successful is pointless because they're more likely just giving you a survivor bias". My input on this is this: Veritasium made less of a point on Survivor Bias, and made a better lecture on learned helplessness. Forget Les Brown, forget the thousands of "successful" people who were in the most unlucky circumstances, who made one point: Be intentional with your life, which most of us ARE NOT, and life wont act upon you. You will act upon it. There's no denying luck is involved with success. The point is, when luck comes your way, you'd be a fool not to take advantage of it, and when bad luck comes your way, you'd be a fool to not know how to act upon it. The fact there's so many more people who fail to succeed, than those who do, is because people have a hard time being intentional with their lives. People let life/nature act upon them. This also goes into your rant on determinism and free-will, (which also gave people the message they're not in control). It's apparent your vlogs are a product of your own inner conflicting thoughts, and as enlightening as they can be, they're damaging in many ways, in my opinion. You speak with this presumptive tone, not factual. Unless a man gets killed, or ones health is in question, you can act upon virtually any situation given you have acquired the will and knowledge for it. Perhaps it's indeed only circumstance that one acquires the knowledge which is key to their success, but in this age knowledge is so abundant, it comes in so many shapes and sizes, either wrong or right, it's almost impossible for circumstance and valuable information to not find you given enough time. Get over it. Once you get what you need to know, use it and act upon it because the ball is in your court now. Maybe this comment was that "uncontrollable" circumstance that gives you what you need. Maybe it hurts you. Trial and error will be your greatest teacher as long as you're paying attention.
What he is saying though is that even if you do the right things, it is not a guarantee of success on the Bill Gates / Steve Jobs / Elon Musk level. This said...focused, hard work to improve knoweldge, skills and overall expertise in your chosen field is a pretty good way to at least be more successful than most of one's peers. It really depends one each individual's viewpoint on what success actually means.
Your point: Most people had not worked hard enough to talk about how much influence luck has on success. Veritasium's point: Even though you work hard enough, you may not succeed like others. I think your point was a nice complement to Veritasium's, rather than something totally conflicting.
maybe all your tips and tricks are based on survivor bias too?? maybe the best "advice" is to be born in a rich family. maybe thats bad advice, but its true advice. if youre not born in a rich family, marry into a rich family. gets you anywhere 1000 times faster than any hard work.
Veritasium is just pointing out a huge flaw in thinking that a lot of people don’t factor into making various plans for succeeding in life because the average person hyper focuses on only the winning outcomes and NEVER ALL of the outcomes. This flawed perspective is one of the major reasons why so many people fail in a variety of things in life from business to dating and health. There are an infinite amount of variables and events that happen at any given time that net the desired result(s). It’s impossible to know all of them but knowing a good amount of these variables will increase your probability of achieving your goals. So it’s not about how you feel but what’s actually happening in front of you and the best way of turning it into something that can benefit you. Trail and error is a great teacher, but learning from others failures and successes will put you that closer towards your desired results. So maybe you should consider being a pragmatic realist along with being an optimist, it’ll definitely make you a better person. Or simply put, take off the rose tinted glasses and put on some bifocals to see the world clear and for what it truly is.
I was pondering similar ideas for some time now. My conclusion of this process - is that most probably life is randomness that we overlay our own mythology on post factum.
StormKidification not exactly.. it's hard to explain without writing an essay in a comments section:) - you create a narrative, a mythical story of your life with emphasis on some key elements in it, which might be a false memory, or misunderstanding of the situation, but the key element is the post factum part (and yes, sorry for the 'fancy' words, that's a PTSD from the years spent in philosophy department=). It is easy to 'choose your own adventure' when you already know the end of it. You already know the end point of your story, so it's easy to pick and choose the facts that seamlessly lead from alpha to omega in a coherent manner.
@Beeblebrox One yea, I think I understand what you mean. That's basically Dan Dennett's argument for keeping the concept of free will even though the case for it is mostly polemic nowadays. I don't know how I feel about it, as I still "want to believe" that preconceived intentional shift into more, or less random situations is possible. In other words, I do agree with your premise - there is a way to please the small gods of randomnes;) and that way is to actually do the first step, and then hopefully the next =)
Wonderful video, thanks. It's refreshing to hear a successful person acknowledge the struggle, and you did so in a humble, honest way. I'd like to know whether or not you had to come up from a hard life. Not to judge, but if you didn't, all the more respect for your insight and compassion!
yuck soap-opera-effect IMHO the problem is panning scenes look unnatural - I think there's a video on saccade in this channel and how the eye naturally jumps from spot to spot when panning
Another good example of survivor bias is saying they dont write music like they used to. But the only selection of artists they have over that opinion are the artists that have stood the test of time so far. It really irks me when people say music isnt like it was back in the day, I think music is still great and still has tons of potential.
***** Yes but my point is back then, whether it be the 80s, 90s, 70s. You wouldnt of liked 90% of what was on the radio either. Most of those artists arent around anymore because they got old. Its not like they were playing Pink Floyd 24/7 on the radio, or Led Zeppelin. Also the 80s was just horrific.
+Melomania This conversation reminds me of an exchange from Airheads... "No offense, but today's music doesn't have a whole lot to say." "Is that right? So you're gonna tell me that 'Purple Haze' says something?"
+Melomania Discussing this with my father, since I wasn't around in the 70s, I have been told that good music was still much more frequent, like you had the occasional bad piece, but it wouldn't stick. Of course that could very well be my father just loving 70s music, but it was a common thing: supposedly the radio really was just Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, Beatles, Rolling Stones, Deep Purple and all that. Who knows though, unless we get a time machine, we can't really check.
Poldovico You can, You can check the billboard charts for each year. A lot of the artists in the charts arent even recognizable. Of course, the closer you get to the 60s the more beatles you will see though.
This is first time I’m hearing about survivor bias. Thanks to you. I have to watch this video again to absorb all of it. I felt my brain lighter. If there will ever be book written on survivor bias it will bring a lot of positivity in humans I guess.
I've been watching this channel for as long as I can remember and I've only just noticed that the logo gives Veritasium an atomic weight of '42'. Awesome.
Very good point. I was aware of the survivor bias before watching this video, but I never thought about how it applies to stories of success. Very nice. Love your videos!
Great video. I made a video on this topic myself because it shows up a lot in my coaching conversations because this bias is so easy to fall for, in a real world way on social media where it looks like everybody else is having the same experience as the top 1%, because they are the most visible. Most people's success stories are hindsight bias plus survivorbias. That makes most people's success stories unreliable! Thanks again!
In WWI... at the start of the war, the soldiers didn't wear helmets... and in the infirmaries they quickly realize that most injures were in the top of the head from artillery fire... so the army quickly started issuing those classic WWI helmets everyone knows. The problem was that instead of decreasing the number of head injures, the infirmaries experience an almost 5 times increase in the number of soldiers with head injures. Seeing that some (stupid) people in high command though they should prohibit the use of the helmet since it was clearly worsening the situation. Of course (smart) people realized that the number of head injuries increase, because before the helmets, those people were being killed, instead of just injured.
+Mateus Bittencourt Why did it increase?
+latrbuild Because more soldiers were surviving to make it into the infirmaries with their head injuries instead of dying from the their head wounds.
+latrbuild Because instead of being straight out killed they were now injured due to the helmets. deaths.
+Mateus Bittencourt You should tweet this to Derek. This is a sweet example of Survivor Bias.
Erick Coser please learn to use Google. It is 21st century Grandpa.
The same definitely applies to movies, everyone says that old movies are better but that's only because we remember the classics and not the duds.
+dgreyz - Not at all. It just makes sense to only remember the old movies if they were good (or extraordinarily bad). Conversely, if you watched a bad movie yesterday or even one year ago, you probably still remember it.
I think it's really a matter of being unable to remember all the movies you watched in your life.
And if we are talking about old as in "before I was born", then surely only the good ones made it.
+dgreyz I think it might be nostalgia as well. I usually find new, innovative music, to be better than old stuff. I almost never listen to older music, at age 38. czcams.com/video/cmUR7bVahK4/video.html
dgreyz I can see your point now. I agree
Yeah and it frustrates me so much when people say "The good ol days" when really 50 years ago there was 5x as much poverty, many times more war, starvation etc. But unfortunately must people don't care about facts even if they say they do, they want to cling to their rose-coloured glasses of their personal anecdotal experience
Pretty much all of the "classic" films from the 60s and 70s are utter shit. People just think they're good because they're told to think they're good or they're remembering them with nostalgia.
"I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein’s brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops." - Stephen Jay Gould
Omg
This is true.
@Matt What the hell are you even talking about? Are you hurt? Did your wife leave you? Where the hell are you even coming from?
@Matt Based and redpilled.
I hv been thinking about this for so long
Bill gates dropped out of Harvard, not community college
Excellent point
So I have to work hard to get into harvard to them drop out?
R3lay only if you have the opportunity to make a gigantic company
This implies that people who go to community college aren't as intelligent as people who go to some prestige college. Most people who go to community college do so because of the college credit system. They do community college for about 1-2 years and then transfer to some University to decrease their expenses. Not everyone grows up with a silver spoon.
@@painexotic3757 on average, they are. They have higher standardized test and IQ scores.
It reminds me of the question of "why does the good guys always win"? The answer is that is because the winners get to write the story.
+pyrokazama cuz the other guys could be just as good but they cannot put their end of the story in. ic ic
Woah.. that's actually really deep
Modern Warfare Cpt. Price
I mean ever since I was in junior high I thought about what kind of a world would it be had the Nazis won.
What kind of things would we believe to be good etc.
And then of course how bad were the winners of WWII.
+feikkiacco the same as now, i believe
I think this every time I see someone post one of those "We rode in the backs of pickup trucks that ran on leaded petrol, and our mothers smoked and drank through pregnancy, and we survived!" Well, yeah..._you_ survived. How many didn't?
You left out the anti-vaxxers. Seriously though their kids should just die immediately upon the decision not to vaccinate
@Khaffit LOL....made me laugh!!!
Far too many...
THE WEAK ONES!! ;D
@@bigsmall246 What the fuck is wrong with you? You're literally wishing kids to die you sick fuck.
I don't really like adding this to this (surprisingly nice for CZcams) comment pool, but
I just wanted to say that I guess this would apply to questions raised by some concerning intelligent design, saying "why is the eye so perfect", or "why are animals so perfect for their environment" when the simple answer is "they survived".
It's something I thought of for a while, and didn't know exactly how to say it, like the furthest I got was, if I see "why do animals want to reproduce", I think "why does dust want to gather in corners".
Thanks for the vid :)
Natural Selection
Stephen Waldron wish more creationists realized that
Likewise, the common suggestion: "it can't be a coincidence that the Earth is exactly the right distance from the sun for life as we know it to exist.".
The answer of course, is that if the Earth were at a different distance, we wouldn't be here asking that question.
So of all the trillions of planets in the universe, only those at "exactly the right distance" will end up with conscious beings capable of asking why they are at exactly the right distance.
Matt Coller That doesn't necessarily mean there is no creator though, right? It means it could be another possibility, but it doesn't negate the possibility of there being a creator.
Possiblity#1
An unlikely outcome came about through means we do not fully understand yet. Where did matter come from? Was it always there? How did matter become life?
Possiblity#2
A creator created the universe as we know it.
If at your house you hear the doorbell ring. It could be that someone rang it, or the wind did something or the wires were loose enough to touch. If someone then followed the sound of the doorbell by shouting "Open the door", you can be certain which option it was.
In the same way, if the creator is sending messages through messengers (Noah, Moses, Jesus, Muhammad, etc), we should evaluate those messages to see if they have merit then make our decision.
You're absolutely right '@@qutuz9495' that this doesn't prove a negative.
So yes, it remains a possibility that there's a man in the sky who created the universe 13.8 billion years ago, but waited the first 9.2 billion years before creating the solar system (perhaps fitting in a few rough drafts first?). Then waited another 4 billion years before creating any multi-cellular life, and finally humans with intelligence only a few thousand years ago. And apparently he still has such low self-esteem that he now expects all those humans to spend all their time (and money) singing songs about how great he is, otherwise he will throw them into eternal damnation...
I do indeed agree that remains a possibility.
from 6:18 to 7:50 hit close to home. I always blamed myself for not trying hard enough, and then tried harder. When success didn't happen, I blamed myself again and tried even harder. And then... there was no success. All the successful people shove their success in your face and claim they "worked harder than everybody else". This made me spiteful, hateful and very depressed. The thought "what if they are right and I still should try harder" got me back in the working loop. Learning about survivor bias puts my mind to ease. I did work very hard. I just haven't gotten lucky yet.
Ну жди удачи до старости лет
This is known as the just world fallacy, the idea that the world is good and fair, wealthy people are wealthy because of their hard work and poor people are poor because they are lazy. If you look at real world data you will see that some people become wealthy through good fortune and there are plenty of people that work hard in essential services for mediocre wages. The reality is that trying to improve yourself and putting the work in will likely enhance your chances of doing well in life, so it is a good thing to do, but it will not guarentee anything. Much of what happens in life is probabilistic in nature. Many years ago I suffered a traumatic head injury in a road accident, with the aid of superb hospital treatment my life was saved and I have no long term side effects. Any slight perturbation to the variables in that accident could have easily resulted in my death or debilitating brain damage instead.
We also have to look at it from the other angle: if you stop working hard, you are almost guaranteed to never succeed.
I personally look at it this way: people that have found success have all worked hard long enough for it. But How long and how hard you need to work to achieve success depends on luck.
95% of 'success' is having the 'right [or is that wrong] people' to compare with, and/or support you [right people]. Nearly all the very wealthy folks started wealthy (family wealth and a solid education/status base). Real success often comes when you define it in your own terms, rather than letting others 'suggest' what's good for you. Be you own survivor. Warm bed, roof over you head, food on te table, and a friend or two.
I feel this. I strongly believed that if you work hard in any workplace you would get somewhere. Probably for a decade. The answer to my experiences with that was no. Actually a lot small places doing what your employer tells you is like pouring gas on a fire. I would have found this hard to believe but you have to remember, people are unpredictable (they might need to meet personal needs you can't interpret) and your financially dependent on a person meaning your job security and future is unpredictable..
It might be controversial to say it but a lot of places I have worked seemed like a kiss or slap system. Usually employers would be married men adjusting to their age which is hard, I get this. But would resent you for reasons out of your control (maybe being younger or gender - don't come at me) And the situation turns into a set up where you can't really win. I understand reassurance seeking but it's like suddenly your employer is a resentful spouse. It's the good qualities you have that they reacted to as a threat and needed to put you down to tolerate being near you. I blamed myself everytime and worked harder to make it worse
I thought it would be just a few places by chance... But it seems to be kind of consistent. But when you think about people,it makes sense. Don't treat what people say as it's complete logic. It's based on feelings. And those feelings will be projected onto you 😉. I am going to work for 5 months and continue upgrading so I can put work towards something that can't evaporate. And now I'm coping through a CZcams comment 🥲 my face hurts
Music is a big one. There are always people that say "music was better in the 60s" for example. Look at The Beatles, Bob Dylan, Pink Floydd etc. Personal bias aside, there is also the fact that there were also millions of other terrible crummy bands of the same genre that didn't survive until today. Loads of failed attempts and the only ones that survive until today were the ones that were good enough to be succesful then.
+Champagne Stegosaur People also like to leave out that musicians are generally more skilled today than they were several decades ago. It's just a matter of resources really. I can study an instrument the old way 100% of the time learning the scales and patterns and how notes interact through trial and error, or I can sprinkle in techniques of various successful musicians. It hurts the egos of the 40 something's but in todays music scene most of the old "legends" are average at best skill wise. It's surprising to me that some people genuinely expect their glory days to be the peak of music, as if humans wouldn't progress as they always do with everything else.
Nope that is not the case for music.
Looking at the top 10 of today and the 70s, today's is full of shit.
And I m not comparing the worst of today with the best of then.
I m comparing the best of both times.
And ofcourse it's not magical or unexplained- there are historic and social reasons behind it.
Fevos Man No, you're just flat out wrong. "looking at the top 10," oh, you mean a list based on popularity that has literally nothing to do with skill level? This is exactly what I was talking about. 90% of people disregard skill and just talk from a place of personal taste, and then they claim things that they like more are better. That's just not how it works. You're opinion does not help or hinder someone's actual ability.
Marketing is horrible now. Listen to godspeed you! Black emperor, or any modern orchestral music. It's amazing, but it's so unpopular.
+Fevos Man lol, yeah, dude. No possible way is your subjective opinion biased.
This video was unexpectedly more deep than usual. But maybe I'm biased because I just saw this video a few minutes ago and remember it better.
M E T A
@@seanhardy_ yeah too meta for my liking. I'm gonna need to have some more tea
@@vishalsyoutube Hey can someone explain why's this meta?
@@dingding4898 It's ironic of the video
@@dingding4898 because it makes a reference to itself
One of the best versions of survivor bias in my eyes is when the French started using helmets in WW1. When they were issued to the troops head injuries reported skyrocketed. Many generals wanted to end the program after looking at the numbers. Someone realized however head injuries skyrocketed because without the helmets those men would have been listed as dead instead of injured evacuated to an aid station.
I imagine the few people who understand english and encountered you in the street, the ones who don't know look strange at you but think you are making a vlog about the preserved historical area of the city, those who know english otherwise will see a vlogger think the same thing and then hear "if a cat falls from the twentyeth floor it just splats" and get more confused than a bee in an elevator.
Lol at the way he is talking to the camera as he walks past numerous "Silence please" signs.
I am reasonably successful by American society"s standards. I got a great post-secondary education. I am a physician. I worked hard. Even so, the underlying reasons for my success remain that I was born into a home with two loving parents who were college educated and stayed together. They taught me that education is important and that I should never be resting on my laurels. They achieved financial stability and created a home full of emotional stability for my brother and me. They fostered an environment where I was actually expected to go to university. I am also a straight, white, male who speaks native American dialect. Would I have been successful based on hard work alone? Maybe. I was given so many lucky breaks that I really can't claim it on my ambition and intellect alone.
But the fact that you recognize your luck allows you to make better decisions/rule. I'm unfortunately not white and privilege, raised as a Hispanic in a predominantly black underprivileged neighborhood but I am relatively successful amongst millennial minorities in America. I too attribute that to my stable loving home, an attribute sometimes uncommon amongst many minorities in America. But I can still recognize the shred of privilege that I was provided. This allows me to used judgment in an unbiased and considerate way. And hopefully I can use my success to better the neighborhood that tho marginalized and disenfranchised, provided me with all the resources I needed to be successful.
We do stand on the shoulders of others
Cool
I think this is a pointless observation. Everything single thing about us is due to nature or nurture. You are successful because you are intelligent and worked hard. Technically, you cannot take credit for either of those things or for your success, because you're intelligent and you work hard due to your inherited genes and the way you were brought up, but what's the point of stating this. All you're doing is allowing people to blame others for their failings. Unsuccessful people already blame everyone before themselves - everyone more successful than them, the middle class, the establishment, the system, white people, politicians, etc. - they don't need you to give them another scapegoat.
I have a Black Hispanic U.S. American cousin born to an illegal immigrant Dominican mother who had to work her arse off to make ends meet doing underpaid work and they lived in a Spanish-speaking slum, he is a lawyer now... All he had was a rich (overseas) father who occasionally sent him money and that was enough to be successful.
If some cats survived after reaching terminal velocity then would that mean some cats could survive falling from a plane
Yes.
ho ly sh it
If you get past the lack of air pressure and cold.
Yes
Some humans can.
I think being aware of survivor bias is also important in developing a sense of humility. understanding that there are many genius-level people who were unlucky enough to be born in a place that offers little to no social mobility or education, or who have experienced things in their lives that significantly impact their natural talents and that despite that, you were lucky enough to not be subject to such circumstances and succeed is a powerful thing.
This is capitalisms fault, while the issue isnt unique to capitalism, this system has also not improved much from feudalism for the majority of the world. i.e. billions are still in poverty which is a bit different from the billions in poverty b4 capitalism. Social services, education and opportunities are not something left to chance in a certain system of organising the economy and society that starts with the letter C
Also veritasium and you talking about luck and success is just an effect of having your (plural) whole lives. It's a symptom of the system that everyone will start to associate it with terms like natural and life but its entirely a human construct. We can provide basic necessities for the entire population of the earth but we dont bcus of thid artificial system of organisation.
8:02 Man! I was ready for join your hippie commune.
The survivor Bias is actually something I think about a lot. Especially when it comes to competitive environments and how people keep asking the winners how to improve. They might not know themselves what actually made them improve, they just believe that something made them improve.
Being aware of the survivor bias is EXTREMELY important. It can save you a lot of headache, as well as coming to the wrong conclusions! It's especially useful when combating the bullshit "meritocracy" talking point that is being pushed by billionaires who parasitize on society, thinking that they've earned it.
Lol yeah. Just because some dude with a mansion and car tells you to chase your dreams, doesn't mean you should. You can end up wasting your entire life chasing it and achieving nothing, and losing everything.
And it's in your boss's interest for you to believe that going above and beyond will earn you a reward, or a seat at the table. That might be the case in some situations, but in a lot of cases they will just exploit that extra work by making it the standard for everyone and not actually giving anyone any meaningful reward.
What you said after the 7:00 minute mark really makes sense. People will always look toward "successful" people and think that's the way they can be successful. When in reality there are no definite ways to become successful. Success always involves luck.
True. The hard work and determination are super important as well. But the part about perseverance, if you think about it, is just for giving luck enough time to manifest, if that makes any sense.
@@Surkee Could you elaborate more on the perseverance part?
@@leodahvee Well it's not necessarily true. It's just a way of looking at things. Say, if luck has a 10% chance of happening, there's a higher chance of it happening over a period of 1 year instead of 1 month. For example if you run a business, there's a higher chance to find the right client in a period of 1 year instead of 1 month. I'm not talking about luck as in a "magical" thing that is out of our control, I'm talking about it as if it were something that we create, through perseverance and hard work. There could still be an aspect of chance to it, of course, but a lot of it is still in our control.
For Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Zuckerberg, most of the "self-made" tech billionaires, sure they had good ideas and worked hard but 100% of them also had a rich relative or contact or some kind of money for nothing, that got them started. That's how to become successful, have good ideas and work hard, and get your rich relative to bankroll you, like they all did.
@@jessicalee333 (sorry for my grammar)
their good ideas? are you sure?
many nameless scientists and artists work for them, they aren't the one inventing and designing or even giving the ideas. I think it's kinda wrong for people who only are the boss to get most of the money because they are the boss. there is definitely something wrong with billionaires existing. no matter how smart you are, having so much wealth isn't something that someone deserves. there are many talented people out there who are better. chance plays a very important rule in investment despite what they(billionaires) tell you.
you can try hard or be a genius and follow the same path as they did but there is a very low chance of you getting billionaire too but yes you can get rich.
Perfect! Steve Jobs, Bill Gates and... "that guy that founded Dell"
+kalevader You mean Michael what'izname? I missed that. So funny.
I think this is one of the main reasons why people say that music used to be better than it is today. All the great songs are to be remembered and the awefull ones are to be forget, that leaves you with nothing but the great songs.
I know, it’s kind of late, but I think that explains nostalgia pretty well. You (mostly) remember the good stuff, that’s why you think everything was better in the past.
@@FlorianBriegel not rly true, i used to enjoy listening to the radio in 2009 and 2010 but after those years music has gotten to bad to enjoy radio so it's clearly something else
@@DiceDecides This is also kinda late, but I think this general opinion, that music was better in the past, is partially down to the fact that you're more impressionable when you're younger. With music ever evolving, things on the radio from when you were younger tend to be more to your personal liking, and music on the radio today will generally be less to your personal liking.
I'm not saying what you're saying isn't right as I believe you, I have a similar feeling. I'm also not excluding survivor bias from being a factor as you will tend to remember listening to the radio as when every song suited you and not that one day when one song they kept playing was one you hated. I could go rambling on, but there are so many factors that cause this phenomenon, simply discrediting one because you no longer enjoy listening to the radio isn't right.
One simple fact is that you're not the first (by a long shot) to dislike new music and prefer older music. This has been a permanent theme for centuries now, pretty much since music was widely connected across countries. A lot of children listening to the radio today will be saying the same things in 10, 15, 20 years, just like many people did before them.
So really, unless music has been permanantly getting worse since becoming widely connected across countries (which technically is possible, but I doubt) one cannot simply say that music has gotten worse, because people who enjoyed music on the radio years ago, no longer do today.
Thanks for coming to my TED talk, I guess I did ramble after all...
And even so I don't agree that music was better back then.
That last point you made really hit home. I have a brother that has been incredibly lucky and has relied on his luck throughout his life. He is now at a point in his life that he no longer needs luck. He's a totally financially independent living the life of Riley. Yet I've always worked hard (and still do) but he believes I'm lazy, otherwise I'd be just as well off as him. I could tell you so many stories of where he had unimaginable good fortune yet he just took it for granted.
Old folks always say stuff like " In my day, we didn't baby our kids so much. We just let em go play outside by themselves all day. We smoked a pack a day and didn't wear seat belts and we didn't give a shit about the environment and look at how we turned out, just fine." Yeah those of you who happened to have survived. Those who didn't make it aren't around to tell us about how shitty it was back then.
Plenty of kids were maimed or killed by lawn darts, yet old people act like lawn darts were harmless because they were more competent as children. Nope, survivor bias.
What that says is that we have learned to live better lives over the last 100 years. The thing about babying kids may be because 60 or 70 years ago, few people owned cars so roads were very lightly populated with motor traffic and children could go out and play without the parents worrying their kid would be run over. That isn't the case today given the car-centric urban planning that has happened in some Western countries from the 1970's onward.
the locations of your vlogs could not be more random haha
+boy638 How did this guy become so damn rich?
+neverAskMeWhy07 Lots and lots of hard work, and a bit of luck.
What you said a the end, how the people who succeed make the rules, reminds me of my struggles as an amateur artists. A lot of the advice I get from pros ... just doesn't work, and I realized why: they have other parts of the information that they just expect people to have, because they have it.
Same goes for my skills with a computer. It's odd to me when people can't solve a basic tech problem that I only had to google. When it's obvious what is going on is that all the people I know, who do what I do, have that skill.
Very late to comment on this. But what are those people expecting others to have? I'm also a practicing artist. I think it would help me a lot to know.
Coincidentally, I'm also a software engineer. Lol we're the same.
The other cognitive bias at play there is attribution error. They ATTRIBUTE their success to some particular skill or action when, in fact, they were in the right place at the right time, or knew someone helpful, or they're attractive so they got noticed
@@skylible I am also an artist and software engineer. We are legion.
Some things I’ve learned as an adult
1. Anyone living in a developed country has experienced at least some luck
2. Fair or not, anyone living in a developed country can save 10 percent of their income. This is a game changer. Sacrificing sleep to work extra, or sacrificing fast food to just eat a can of beans may be required, but this makes a persons financial situation change dramatically - and yes, it’s going to be a lot harder for some that for others but it works, and there’s a certain amount of fairness in the fact that you have the opportunity to save money in the first place without outlaws or thugs robbing your safe
3. You can always make your situation better, even if just a little.
Life is definitely unfair, and luck definitely plays a huge role. But it’s not the only thing, and just because life is unfair, that is no reason to throw in the towel. There’s still some stability in our modern age and that goes a long way when you’re trying to dig yourself out of a hole
Luck definitely counts, but don't count on it.
There are some holes which one cannot dig themselves out from.
Also, if someone runs into ENOUGH bad luck in a *row*... waaay too often.... waaaay too much--they're done.
As in, you wouldn't even hear their input, because they were *SO* unsuccessful, no one knows about them, has never heard of them, and in a certain sense ... they really 'never existed'.
Sort of like myself. Almost exactly, actually.
@@Novastar.SaberCombat all the best man. Hope you're okay
DEEP ! ! For about 10 years now I have been telling people "Just because the outcome was good; does NOT mean you made the right Choices!" Same idea .... just because you survived - does not mean you made all the right choices...My background; Probably more successful than most of my high school class, but I can easily see that, at LEAST, four major "Lucky Events" were strongly responsible for my success.
I'm glad that you took a moment to highlight your point at the end, yet saddened that you (rightly) needed to. Yes, "this is the Internet", but for some reason my mind keeps telling me that the kind of people that watch your videos are people interested in "thinking", and that even though we're all still learning, there really shouldn't be a need to clarify that point.
Thanks for the video - I'm glad that you decided to do what you do.
+Wildepix Well, if you think about it, I doubt his intent is to tell people who already understand his point what his point was. His intention or hope is probably to tell people who *don't* get the point, and make them think about it.
+Mythricia Clearly.
+Wildepix The point at the end would of great value for people only starting to watch him with much skepticism, cause some friend or etc mentioned to them how much they enjoy watching this channel and all the good.
+Wildepix
Disclaimers are worthwhile no matter what - in this video his idea that he would have been misinterpreted may look like asspull, but in others not - and as a creator you have no idea how clear you really were (to your extremely mixed audience).
If it becomes good habit and doesn't interfere with the rest of the video - then go for it.
While I was familiar with the concept, I was not familiar with its proper name and with the specific examples. I find such videos valuable for "thinking" audience as well, because now we know the name of the phenomenon, know some examples, and have a well made and different video to refer to when we meet this phenomenon in day to day life.
I think I like videos on this channel even more than on the other.
+Jorelplay agreed
da best
Yes!
hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh i agree
I disagree.
I watched like 20 inspirational motivating videos. And then i watched this, it wiped all the motivation i had. Thanks now i can sleep without feeling bad, it's 2am
“The guy who founded Dell” is Michael Dell
And he was an arsehole. What's your point?
That you remember the name of some jerk, but there are thousands of amazing people's names we'll never remember?
Sir, I merely have two things to say to you after viewing this new video:
1. I LOVE the way you state the conclusion about the survivor's bias coloring policymaking (and social judgement on others in general). Every scientist worth her first congress paper is cautious about this bias in her research, when relying on data that are randomly provided by an uncontrolled experiment. Yet, so few of them actually transfer this wisdom to their everyday life and take it into account in the way they judge different components of their society !
2. I always loved your "rambling" videos, and the laid-back and spontaneous atmosphere they convey. It was only when I started doing pedagogical videos myself, for my own students, that I realized how WICKEDLY DIFFICULT it is to conduct a long, technical and entertaining monologue like yours in a single uncut take, that does not end up looking or sounding like a big mess ! To me, this is the pedagogical equivalent of stand-up comedy !
I hope to get there myself in ... say, ten more years of experience with the medium !
And I then leave with a more general "Hats off":
My teaching physics in universities has been profoundly changed in the past five years by your example as a science popularizer (and by that of a few other fellow vloggers, whom you certainly know too).
Thank you for unknowingly helping me improve my teaching skills ! :-)
Yes
I want to now do a masters thesis. On high rise cats
I’m scared for the cats, but good luck to you nonetheless. 🥂
already working on it, first publisher wins! :D
And goodluck because PETA's gonna hunt or murder you at some point in time
I want to now throw a cat out the window! our personalities are a little different. (don't worry I won't do it)
High rise cats...
Those are some big cats.
🐱+🍄⬅ cat on Mario mushroom
☺
Great video, Derek! I wonder if Survivor Bias can also account for the missing links when plotting out the evolution of humans. Perhaps the evolutionary human precursors didn't evolve to human beings in a linear fashion like we thought but in a very branched out fashion with varying types of humanoids co-existing on earth, but because we only found the humanoids that inhabited/managed to be trapped in swamps, ice, caves, or whatever preserving media/habitat they became fossilized in, our picture of human evolution is all wrong and somewhat incomplete. Perhaps there were a plethora of other humanoids living in areas not condusive to fossilization/preservation.
Very interesting and probably true. But that's a well known problem in phylogenetic.
I was told that the civilized humans always cremated their dead. So only rogue humans didn't get their bones burned to ash when they died. Also recycling efforts and use of biodegradable materials were more effective so there are less remnants of those early humans for us to study. _DNA is the remnant._
You could say that survivor bias probably gave us the conclusion that we were cavemen. While most of our ancestors probably slept under the night sky or impromptu shelters.
There were branches in human evolution. Those other human branches died off.
Interesting. Didn’t think you would be here.
People who haven't suffered don't know what it feels like essentially
People who have survived suffering may have recovered by rationalizing the suffering and not realizing how many people died or became disabled from the same suffering. Then they feel entitled to judge others for looking at a bad situation realistically, for being earlier in the recovery process, or even for having more risk factors such as racial marginalization. Many judgmental survivors become predators, themselves.
Some people want to meet their favourite actors, actresses, singers and so on. And I am like: "I wish I had an opportunity to have a lunch with Derek and just listen to whatever he tells"
2:48 Shhh...for silence, please!
+Nidalevi It was quiet there, so Derek decided to shoot the video.
"Past performance doesn't guarantee future success".
I saw this video some years ago, and I can't emphasize enough how many times it's been useful to me. The Survivor Bias often disguises a fallacy and due to its counter-intuitive nature it is hard to pick up on it if you've never been exposed to it.
This is a very interesting bias. I am quite interested in all cognitive biases and logical fallacies and am in the process of creating a cognitive bias training on my channel through a series of easily-digestible videos. Thanks :D
Did you make one?
^^^ What SUP DOC said... enquiring minds want to know.
Well it seems like you were very much interested after all. Kudos to you on your success!
Six years later and 2M subs later. Not bad for someone 'quite interested' in cognitive biases!
This is so cool. We get to witness the creation of a channel and also see the result in the present with over 2 million subscribers. Kudos dude!
Survivor bias has a big role in media as well. It's easy to say, for example, that popular music in the 80's (or whichever era) was better composed and more meaningful because the great ones are going to be remembered. If you're just comparing Kashmir or Hotel California to the first thing that pops up on your radio there's probably going to be no comparison. Look back in 20 years and see which songs people are still talking about, and compare those instead.
+Pounce Baratheon
It could be - or it could have been not.
Sometimes bigger barrier of entry actually equals better quality etc.
Looking at your avatar pic I'm wondering what effect mail would have on cat falling survivability. As for music though, rose colored glasses. People always seem to think the crap they listened to growing up was amazing.
+Pounce Baratheon there were a lot of excelent songs written in... well.. forever..., which wouldn't be quite likeable if you didn't understand the frame of reference behind them.
I mean, music is a very structured art: you need to consider harmony, rythm, length, rhyme, etc.... so if you compose a song that breaks with the known pace of say rock&roll, some people won't consider that "likeable".... which doesn't mean it is a _bad_ song.
and there's lots of modern songs that are _popular_ that still follow the pattern of breaking with the establishment, but that doesn't make them _good_ songs.
I guess the survivor (the constant) in all this, is the people's preference.
is it likeable? it's popular.
is it not likeable? it's not popular.
The quality is amazing! You've mastered the vlogs that old CZcams use to be abundant with-that feeling of being right there with the vlogger and a very enjoyful, personal experience despite thousands of miles apart. (speaking of survivor bias when I refer to old CZcams I mean those that were very successful and garnered a reputation for their vlogs such charlie Mcdonnell, ZeFrank, Tyler Oakley, etc.). Not to mention all of your messages are such great introspective and interspective themes that I think we can all learn from and has helped me make a little more sense of this world that is sometimes very confusing so THANK YOU and enjoy KOREA
Thank you for making these videos. I always feel that it's time well-spent on my part when I finish watching one.
I personally know people who consider themselves "hard workers" - who make very poor decisions, and so put themselves in bad situations. They don't see it that way, but from the outside it seems obvious. And these people do it repeatedly, and then insist the whole world is against them. Even when they do stumble across good luck, their poor decisions negate any benefit they could have seen from it. In my opinion, it takes hard work, good decision making, AND luck in order to be successful.
Good
+kyawhitesapphire But what people see as luck is often times the result of being aware of opportunities.
It's another kind of survivor bias, where we only have data on the people who had an opportunity to get rich and took it. We don't have any data on the people, who didn't see that opportunity or didn't want to take the chances associated with it. Therefore, the select few, who were always looking for opportunities and always ready to get into are not necessarily lucky, since you always keep your options open and look for new opportunities, it's logical that you will be the one who gets more opportunities to succeed.
+naphackDT make sense
+naphackDT you don't seem to get it at all... of course it's not pure luck, and of course there are people who does it completely wrong, but of the people who make it, there are many others that does almost the exact same thing and also have the same mindset but with other outcomes. Of course one can do a lot of things to mitigate who much luck influences things, but it's still always there. And not calling it luck, is like calling a dice roll for not being luck either. I mean, if you really look at it, it's just physics and logics... there is no luck... but yet there are.
Also, even when not considering luck. The big picture is still influenced by survivor bias. If you don't see that after this video... then I guess there is really no helping...
(replying with "sometimes it's not like X" after a long explanation of something like that is like saying that a small and really rare exception really makes a difference and actually changes anything about the larger statement (even if the exception is real and really exists... which I'm not saying that it is for that matter)... and also, it truly makes you sound like you are rejecting it... if that was not your intention, try reading what you said again and see what it really sonuds like from someones else's perspective )
+kyawhitesapphire Agree with everything you said, just like to add that education / information is really key here. Good decisions can only be made with information. A balanced healthy person, through education, will probably make the correct decisions.
Love your work! Really feel like you would benefit from a 360 camera for 2Veritasium while you're blogging, could be interesting with some of the amazing places you go to.
Often times a 360 camera is cool, but crap for quality. I would rather have high quality regular video personally.
I'll take this on board - maybe Zurich in July
+Cameron Gee I actually never liked 360 video, it forces me to have to watch the same thing 3-4 times to make sure I didn't miss anything. For 360 video, you can't watch him speak if you want to observe his surroundings (and vice versa), at which point he might as well just do narration anyway.
+VIVA LA VIBE the point is that you can decide what you want to watch: him talking or the scenery.
+Ludix147 I don't want to decide, I come home from work, I want to lean back in my chair and watch the video without needing to do anything. :P
I have watched this for the first time in 2016 and it has made me a more humble person over the last three years. This was such a defining video for my look on society and success.
Thank you Derek!
i really appreciate your videos man, i know they're old but still watch them and really enjoy them!!! you are a very smart individual.
I had a discussion with some friends about survivor bias. If I recall correctly, one of my friends mentioned that she was tired of hearing people complaining that "they don't make movies like they used to," comparing "classic" films with full array of contemporary films. My friend mentioned that there were a lot of bad movies that were came out during the olden days, but those ones unsurprisingly fell into obscurity, leaving only a select batch of older movies to be considered good enough and timeless enough to endure to the present day.
"All we need is a little energon and a lot of luck" - Optimus Prime.
i wish i could articulate my thoughts as well as you do in your videos. very inspirational work you're doing. keep it up! (i realize the video is 3 years old, but applies to all your videos) such a pleasure to watch!
An interesting example of survivor bias is the first mover advantage. This was thought to be a real thing, where the first company to enter a new field would dominate it, based on the study of a number of industrial fields, finding that the dominant company was also the oldest company. However, later study found that there were plenty of examples where there were earlier entrants who simply hadn't survived, so the real advantage was to the first survivor, not the first mover.
I'd say this depends on how long that first company can remain a monopoly. If there's only one company that has a monopoly for multiple years they 1: can grow their user base quite a lot before anyone else even gets the chance. And 2: can develop and innovate a LOT before anyone else even enters the market.
A good example is VRChat. A game that had a 5~6 year head-start on any of the other social VR games. And it shows in the user numbers. VRC has 30k+ daily users on average, while the closest other social VR game (not counting roblox as I couldn't find any data on average users per day for VR) has 100 or so average daily users.
In WWI the armies noticed that the number of head injuries treated increased when they started requiring the soldiers to wear steel helmets. It took a while for somebody to figure out that there were more men getting treated for head wounds because there were less of them dying before they could get treatment.
+Jim Fortune Specifically, the soldiers were getting more injuries because the helmets allowed more of them to survive shrapnel, increasing injuries but decreasing loss of life.
+Jim Fortune If someone didn't point that out, it would've been one the stupidest mistakes ever made.
+Jim Fortune Thats funny, I heard a similar tale of that story but my friend attributed it to soldiers having a greater sense of imperviousness when they put on a helmet.
According to Indy Neidell in "The Great War" series on You Tube, that was what the higher ups in the British Army first thought, and they had almost decided to get rid of helmets until someone did a little checking.
I loved this video and the topic! And you are in Seoul!! Welcome to Seoul :)
By far my favorite video on this channel
I lost count on how many times I watched it
Thanks very much for you wonderfull videos! I love your work!
I wish for you many stability happy, true love and all good things!
That lense makes me dizzy
fish eye lens effect I think
Basically that's how I see with my glasses👓
Or almost, the lenses should be even stronger so that I got the same effect 🤓
+Andy G
image stabilisation i think
the high framerate makes it even worse
+alphie k Technically you're both wrong. It's a GoPro feature, called "Superview", but it's essentially a fish eye lens effect. It's correctable with some pretty simple editing though.
as he talks to the camera there is signs everywhere saying to be quiet
+Jebidah Well, I'm sure you can talk on the street, it's not a cemetary. It's probably there for Mobilephone music busting douchebags, or yelling kids.
yeah
nah, you can hear people talking all around him anyway.
i was just busting a joke i know that sign meant basically don't be an idiot and keep your voice/audible noises somewhat quiet
i got the irony and had a smile on it ;)
I just love your work. I have for so long, but this video... WOW ! Amazing ! There are people making decisions all over the world that would benefit from watching this video ! Thanks, you are awesome !
Ah, revisiting an old favourite. This was the very first video to impress me enough to convince me to subscribe. I'd seen other Veritasium videos but this was the one that finally convinced me. I've since subscribed to many CZcamsrs but I always remember my first.
This applies nicely to people who are amazed that the earth is so well-suited for life. See also: the anthropic principal.
Best video ever! Our world is full of randomness and we are constantly trying to impose causality and meaning on things that may just be random.
Causality is reality. As simple as that.
i think you're biased because of the freshness of the video in your mind at the time of writing this ; )
I started contemplate every night thinking about things because of this vlogs of yours.
We have to think more.
Excellent video. Fair points and good delivery.
And here I thought luck was the intersection of preparation and opportunity.
you never fail to enlighten me. thanks for all the great videos
2:02 You're having to raise your voice to record while a group behind you is loud, meanwhile the sign on the door says "silence please" LOL
JaceTheAce81 lole
I can relate to what your saying .I have graduated from my university with bachelor degree in chemical engineering in four years and i am the first on my class and i am unemployed in my degree for two years now . funny how the world works
Living in a third world country
My dream is to immigrate to Canada
Working on my IELTS
Pray for me
best of luck, mate
Hey, good luck on your journey. Please update on us one day.
successful people being mostly born in rich countries is the ultimate survivor bias
I wish I could subscribe to your channel a million times, every video is so insightful and interesting, I think you're truly one of the best science communicators, and I look forward to seeing your content for a long time.
Such a great way of explaining it! thanks for putting this together!
I love all the people walking by like "what the hell is this guy doing?"
+Jason Is Awesome! The world needs more love!
People I know always say things like "I used to ride in the back of a pickup truck and I'm fine". I always hated this sentiment, low sample size and survivor bias.
Also, I love your walk with camera talks, and you (Derek) always talk about topics I myself think about a lot and consider interesting, thank you for them.
I am reminded of one of my favourite quotes: Life is a lottery where only the winning tickets are visible.
***** Except that the losing tickets don't just get a lot less attention, they disappear completely. Just by having all your ancestors survive to reproductive age, you've already won one lottery. :p
Ya know.. as soon as you said 'survivor bias' the plane thing came to mind. Remember learning it on a design course. Good stuff.
Amazing content. One of your best vids ever. Thank you.
Its been an amazingly eye opening analisis for me. Thank you.
Not how I would have worded it, to sum up if you were confused: For every person who makes it big, there are millions of people who worked just as hard and failed, but you never hear about them because the one person who made it big gets all the media. Then when the person who made it big is asked how to succeed, he says "Work hard" and that's all very well, but he doesn't know about the millions of others who also worked just as hard as he did, but failed.
Thank you, I think you summarised it really well
+Isaak van Daalen There is one more factor, people often times forget.
Working hard alone won't do you any good, if you aren't looking for opportunities. If you are looking for opportunities to make money and flexible enough to consider any kind of opportunity, there will always be the one big chance for a breakthrough, if you just look hard enough.
When referring to successful businessmen, people generally call this "luck".
naphackDT A bit depressing to realise that your future (or past) may depend upon luck or something outside of your control. Then again if you could control everything life would be pretty boring.
Also to anyone thinking of just giving up now, don't. Just because your future could depend on luck doesn't mean you can't still work hard. If you work hard and get a good education, luck has a much better chance of falling on you than if say you were working part-time for a minimum wage job.
What you say is true and it's because people forgot the other key ingredient which is talent. What these successful people really mean is "I'm extremely talented and I worked hard", but to avoid coming across as arrogant, they just say "I worked hard". Untalented people then hear this, work hard themselves, don't succeed and then blame the system and claim the world is stacked against them or they conclude that the successful person must have just got lucky.
@@silverhawkroman What? I really wonder what you're trying to get at with your comment, since the guy didn't say anything about wanting less of something. Also just fyi he posted this 2 years ago so he might not respond.
I really like the way you talk to the camera. It feels like we're with you in the streets. And it makes the all thing easier to follow (not like the guys from SciShow for example who look like they recite their texts and talk too fast).
Great content, once again !
This is the bestest view you gave. Watching your videos relax me :) thanks.
Thank you for the informative video. And also a big thank you for showing the area you have been to! I think I have a new location on my bucket list!
You're really clever and it's always a pleasure to watch your videos.
It's interesting, correlating Veritasium's rant on "Learned Helplessness" and this rant on "Survivor Bias", attributing successful people as more often products of luck or circumstance. Almost two contradictory messages. The message here was "At the end of the day, listening to successful people explain why they're successful is pointless because they're more likely just giving you a survivor bias".
My input on this is this: Veritasium made less of a point on Survivor Bias, and made a better lecture on learned helplessness. Forget Les Brown, forget the thousands of "successful" people who were in the most unlucky circumstances, who made one point: Be intentional with your life, which most of us ARE NOT, and life wont act upon you. You will act upon it. There's no denying luck is involved with success. The point is, when luck comes your way, you'd be a fool not to take advantage of it, and when bad luck comes your way, you'd be a fool to not know how to act upon it.
The fact there's so many more people who fail to succeed, than those who do, is because people have a hard time being intentional with their lives. People let life/nature act upon them. This also goes into your rant on determinism and free-will, (which also gave people the message they're not in control). It's apparent your vlogs are a product of your own inner conflicting thoughts, and as enlightening as they can be, they're damaging in many ways, in my opinion. You speak with this presumptive tone, not factual.
Unless a man gets killed, or ones health is in question, you can act upon virtually any situation given you have acquired the will and knowledge for it.
Perhaps it's indeed only circumstance that one acquires the knowledge which is key to their success, but in this age knowledge is so abundant, it comes in so many shapes and sizes, either wrong or right, it's almost impossible for circumstance and valuable information to not find you given enough time. Get over it. Once you get what you need to know, use it and act upon it because the ball is in your court now. Maybe this comment was that "uncontrollable" circumstance that gives you what you need. Maybe it hurts you. Trial and error will be your greatest teacher as long as you're paying attention.
I absolutely agree. Try not to be a leaf in the wind, be proactive and act upon life. As difficult as it may be.
What he is saying though is that even if you do the right things, it is not a guarantee of success on the Bill Gates / Steve Jobs / Elon Musk level.
This said...focused, hard work to improve knoweldge, skills and overall expertise in your chosen field is a pretty good way to at least be more successful than most of one's peers. It really depends one each individual's viewpoint on what success actually means.
Your point: Most people had not worked hard enough to talk about how much influence luck has on success.
Veritasium's point: Even though you work hard enough, you may not succeed like others.
I think your point was a nice complement to Veritasium's, rather than something totally conflicting.
maybe all your tips and tricks are based on survivor bias too??
maybe the best "advice" is to be born in a rich family. maybe thats bad advice, but its true advice.
if youre not born in a rich family, marry into a rich family. gets you anywhere 1000 times faster than any hard work.
Veritasium is just pointing out a huge flaw in thinking that a lot of people don’t factor into making various plans for succeeding in life because the average person hyper focuses on only the winning outcomes and NEVER ALL of the outcomes. This flawed perspective is one of the major reasons why so many people fail in a variety of things in life from business to dating and health. There are an infinite amount of variables and events that happen at any given time that net the desired result(s). It’s impossible to know all of them but knowing a good amount of these variables will increase your probability of achieving your goals. So it’s not about how you feel but what’s actually happening in front of you and the best way of turning it into something that can benefit you. Trail and error is a great teacher, but learning from others failures and successes will put you that closer towards your desired results. So maybe you should consider being a pragmatic realist along with being an optimist, it’ll definitely make you a better person. Or simply put, take off the rose tinted glasses and put on some bifocals to see the world clear and for what it truly is.
Found your channels on YT last week. You are my best experience in YT till date.
With Love, from India.
Wow this video got so deep at the end. I just love how old veritasium video's end up on my feed so I can enjoy them.
I was pondering similar ideas for some time now. My conclusion of this process - is that most probably life is randomness that we overlay our own mythology on post factum.
+Toxis Non pretentious translation: people razionalize their past
StormKidification
not exactly.. it's hard to explain without writing an essay in a comments section:) - you create a narrative, a mythical story of your life with emphasis on some key elements in it, which might be a false memory, or misunderstanding of the situation, but the key element is the post factum part (and yes, sorry for the 'fancy' words, that's a PTSD from the years spent in philosophy department=). It is easy to 'choose your own adventure' when you already know the end of it. You already know the end point of your story, so it's easy to pick and choose the facts that seamlessly lead from alpha to omega in a coherent manner.
@Beeblebrox One yea, I think I understand what you mean. That's basically Dan Dennett's argument for keeping the concept of free will even though the case for it is mostly polemic nowadays. I don't know how I feel about it, as I still "want to believe" that preconceived intentional shift into more, or less random situations is possible. In other words, I do agree with your premise - there is a way to please the small gods of randomnes;) and that way is to actually do the first step, and then hopefully the next =)
"(...)- is the survivors who get to make the rules."
You're a legend.
Wonderful video, thanks. It's refreshing to hear a successful person acknowledge the struggle, and you did so in a humble, honest way. I'd like to know whether or not you had to come up from a hard life. Not to judge, but if you didn't, all the more respect for your insight and compassion!
I love the messages you send out on this channel Derek! Definitely one of the best videos I've seen lately.
yummmmm 60 fps
+VidandRico Yes we are the same
+Sean Haggard The human eye can only see 24 fps. Just kidding xD
yummmmmm has a shitie Internet
+Sean Haggard That lens though.... eeughhh
yuck soap-opera-effect IMHO the problem is panning scenes look unnatural - I think there's a video on saccade in this channel and how the eye naturally jumps from spot to spot when panning
Another good example of survivor bias is saying they dont write music like they used to. But the only selection of artists they have over that opinion are the artists that have stood the test of time so far.
It really irks me when people say music isnt like it was back in the day, I think music is still great and still has tons of potential.
+Melomania Yeah i agree with you but i still dont like radio music :)
***** Yes but my point is back then, whether it be the 80s, 90s, 70s. You wouldnt of liked 90% of what was on the radio either. Most of those artists arent around anymore because they got old. Its not like they were playing Pink Floyd 24/7 on the radio, or Led Zeppelin. Also the 80s was just horrific.
+Melomania This conversation reminds me of an exchange from Airheads...
"No offense, but today's music doesn't have a whole lot to say."
"Is that right? So you're gonna tell me that 'Purple Haze' says something?"
+Melomania Discussing this with my father, since I wasn't around in the 70s, I have been told that good music was still much more frequent, like you had the occasional bad piece, but it wouldn't stick. Of course that could very well be my father just loving 70s music, but it was a common thing: supposedly the radio really was just Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, Beatles, Rolling Stones, Deep Purple and all that.
Who knows though, unless we get a time machine, we can't really check.
Poldovico You can, You can check the billboard charts for each year. A lot of the artists in the charts arent even recognizable. Of course, the closer you get to the 60s the more beatles you will see though.
This is first time I’m hearing about survivor bias. Thanks to you. I have to watch this video again to absorb all of it. I felt my brain lighter. If there will ever be book written on survivor bias it will bring a lot of positivity in humans I guess.
Awesome video, makes you rethink a lot of stuff ! Thanks for the quality content !
I've been watching this channel for as long as I can remember and I've only just noticed that the logo gives Veritasium an atomic weight of '42'.
Awesome.
and now you know.
42 is the Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, The Universe, and Everything. according to "The hitchhikers guide to the galaxy".
allways great content good job!
This is my favorite video from you, really inspiring. Keep up the good work!
Very good point. I was aware of the survivor bias before watching this video, but I never thought about how it applies to stories of success. Very nice. Love your videos!
Survivor bias is neatly embedded in the old saying: History is written by the victors.
hoo hoo! 60fps FTW! Thanks for the content and its quality :)
Great video. I made a video on this topic myself because it shows up a lot in my coaching conversations because this bias is so easy to fall for, in a real world way on social media where it looks like everybody else is having the same experience as the top 1%, because they are the most visible. Most people's success stories are hindsight bias plus survivorbias. That makes most people's success stories unreliable! Thanks again!
All these Korean people were thinking- "Crazy white guy talking to camera" xD xD
And he's talking so loudly too.
+Gonzesse crazy people those withe guys now days :PP
+Gonzesse none of those people were korean. just a bunch of obnoxious chinese tourists
DO WHATEVER THE FUK U WANA DO!!!
yolo, carpe diem, we are young, set the world on fire, etc. We get it, you're in highschool. WOOO CUHRAAAYZAAY