Talk:1827: Survivorship Bias

Is "defeatest" a typo or a joke? I've never seen Randall make a typo before, but I also don't get the joke if there is one. 162.158.2.184 04:28, 21 April 2017 (UTC)

Definitely a typo. Cardboardmech (talk) 04:59, 21 April 2017 (UTC)

At first I thought this was an unfamiliarity with the word, and was about to talk about how it's a real word and what it means, then I noticed the spelling, LOL! I KNOW I've seen such spelling errors several times before - often getting fixed in the next day or two - but I couldn't provide examples even if my life depended on it. And yeah, I'd say this is more "spelling error" than "typo", the I is nowhere near the E on any keyboard. :) - NiceGuy1 108.162.219.88 05:58, 21 April 2017 (UTC) I finally signed up! This comment is mine. NiceGuy1 (talk) 05:48, 13 June 2017 (UTC)

Not on the QWERTY keyboard, but on the DVORAK keyboard, the E and I are very close. and we all know how nerdy Randall is.

It has been corrected to defeatist Rtanenbaum (talk) 13:28, 21 April 2017 (UTC)

If itdoesn't get fixed, it might be some weird pun on "[survival of] the fittest". Wouldn't make a lot of sense in the context of the sentence though 162.158.91.233 09:12, 21 April 2017 (UTC)

sometimes Randall do not fix errors, so nothing can be concluded on that (would it be survivorship bias to do so? ;-) How should the word be spelled (I'm not native English speaking), and does the word even exist? The spelling should be mentioned when someone explains the title text. I'm not up for it. And then if it is corrected later, it should go into the trivia section as a corrected error. --Kynde (talk) 10:29, 21 April 2017 (UTC)

Transcript's kind of done. Cardboardmech (talk) 05:17, 21 April 2017 (UTC)

I have changed the format to the usual style and added a bit more detail. But else nicely done. --Kynde (talk) 10:29, 21 April 2017 (UTC)

Other than the title text, does any more work need to be done on the explanation? The Template:Incomplete param is pretty vague right now. ~AgentMuffin

No doubt a lottery isn't a wise investment. However, I have not heard about accepting 25% of the prize or in annual instalments for over a decade before. Is that an american habbit? Vince 141.101.105.174 06:17, 21 April 2017 (UTC)

Never heard of such things, either... Elektrizikekswerk (talk) 08:27, 21 April 2017 (UTC)

This is a thing that some American lotteries do. It reduces the amount that you have to pay in taxes. Mulan15262 (talk) 12:49, 21 April 2017 (UTC)

I don't play the lottery but I have heard of this practice and I think its typical here in the states. As I remember, you have the option of accepting 50% of the prize as an immediate payment or of accepting the full amount in installments over 20 years. With a progressive tax schedule this of course will affect the actual amount received and available for use. The use of payments helps the lottery itself as well and the choices of 50% and 20 years is no accident. The lottery can take the 50% it would have paid directly and invest it. A doubling period of 20 years needs an annual return on investment of only 3.6% (approx) so it works out to be a good deal for both parties. Unless of course your life expectancy is less than 20 years! ExternalMonolog (talk) 00:31, 22 April 2017 (UTC)

The title text is written in the style of an inspirational/motivational speech. Do not be deterred, you can do ANYTHING. Sebastian --172.68.110.58 07:05, 21 April 2017 (UTC)

I took the liberty of editing the very emotional text and replace it with something a bit more "professional", as I think fits this site better. I am still not quite happy about it, as advertising jackpots without taxes and not advertising the payout time are local phenomena only applicable to some jurisdictions, and make no difference to the overall survivor bias that is the theme of the comic 172.68.182.202 08:16, 21 April 2017 (UTC)

I think the whole tax stuff can be deleted. Playing lottery is always stupid - even if there were no taxes on the prize. Elektrizikekswerk (talk) 08:25, 21 April 2017 (UTC)

I agree with Elektrizikekswerk on both issues. Lottery is just tax on low IQ we call it in my family ;-) --Kynde (talk) 10:25, 21 April 2017 (UTC)

I've heard it called "gambling for the math-impaired." Miamiclay (talk) 17:30, 21 April 2017 (UTC)

Third paragraph is taken word-by-word from Wikipedia article on Survivorship Bias. 162.158.92.88 12:54, 21 April 2017 (UTC)

Here's another example of survivorship bias, "We grew up without bicycle helmets and 'nonsense' like that when kids and dogs ran free and we came out fine" but of course I also remember there were a lot of kids with concussions and there were a lot of three-legged dogs running around. Both cases have greatly decreased because of bicycle helmets and leash laws. Rtanenbaum (talk) 13:39, 21 April 2017 (UTC)

And don't forget all the dog bites that came out "just fine"! ExternalMonolog (talk) 00:58, 22 April 2017 (UTC)

If I may suggest, survivor bias is a special example of Bastiat's "That Which Is Seen, and That Which Is Unseen", aka, the Broken Window Fallacy. The logic failure lies in paying attention to only part of the results, not all of them. I'd extend this to argue for acceptance of "The Ends Justify The Means... Buy You Gotta Consider ALL The Ends, Not Just Some Of Them". Saving 100 people is one great end. But if you also kill 10,000 of them, but in the background, where they don't stand out, the ends aren't justified. --108.162.212.227 19:54, 21 April 2017 (UTC)

There actually was a case of a man who won the lottery after buying the same set of numbers every time. Naturally, his advice to everyone was "Keep buying the same numbers every time and you'll win eventually." Of course, there's no way he could be persuaded this was nonsense. Mark314159 (talk) 01:43, 22 April 2017 (UTC)

This is an awfully long explanation, considering that it barely mentions Randall's assertion that *all* motivational speakers should include disclaimers (IE: "Results are not typical."). If compared by net-income versus cost-of-living, the vast majority of people end their lives with less wealth than their parents, in spite of any efforts to better their situation through education, savings, investment, et cetera. In other words, no matter how hard they try, most people lose. That's just a hard economic truth, & many people espousing hard work, dedication & especially sticking to your goals, tend to overlook the fact that financial success is actually quite rare, regardless of the lifelong effort put into it. As stated, nobody hires the failures to give talks; Maybe we should!

Also, speaking to graduating students is far from the most common activity of such professional speakers. The use of motivational speakers at conventions, paid seminars, & sales pitches is much more common & frequent than talks given to students. Since Randall doesn't mention students in any way, I think that specific phrase about students should be removed from the explanation. 141.101.99.11 17:46, 22 April 2017 (UTC)

Less wealth than their parents? While it would be hard to compare, I would argue that they mostly end up better, as technological advances makes economy grow. Although it's true that depressions can reverse it. -- Hkmaly (talk) 00:09, 23 April 2017 (UTC)

This isn't quite relevant to the topic, but please let me vent out about a certain opinion that is going to appear in the explanation eventually: that lotteries are bad investment just because they lose you money on average. This is in fact bullshit, because so does insurance! If you really want to apply math to such things, you need to integrate welfare, not money profit, over the probabilities. Wherein welfare is some half-arbitrary function over money that denotes its actual impact on one's life and that usually grows slower than linearly on positive side (your life changes more after earning the first million dollars than after the second one), but sharply drops on the negative side (a bad debt is a life-ender). With such a welfare($) choice lottery is in fact bad while insurance is good. Note, hovewer, that in some situations, like when you already have a big debt and the mafia is killing you for it next week, lottery makes a surprisingly good, while still unlikely, investment! It's all a matter of the specific situation with welfare($). (Sorry for bad engrish, I never learned all those math terms.) 172.68.182.136 20:18, 22 April 2017 (UTC)

For example, although Donald Trump had many successful businesses, he also had some that went bankrupt.

this is back to front. you need to do more research. --141.101.107.18 12:10, 24 April 2017 (UTC)

People who died in a time of war never tell us what was the price for the victory; people who didn't risk their life usually write the history though.