+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. ua-cam.com/video/cmUR7bVahK4/v-deo.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.
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.
"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
+Mateus Daniel heeeeeeey. I really like this channel too. Check out vsauce, its another great channel with similar content. And i'm from brazil too. yay hahaahaha
+Hermano Zenaide wow, that one was good! I don't believe this could be applied to YT world, since we can always have new stuff, but some one should look at the data 'cause we still have the front page script. as always, thanks for reading. (hu3)
I don't really like adding this to this (surprisingly nice for UA-cam) 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.
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.
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?
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'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.
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 UA-cam comment 🥲 my face hurts
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 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...
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.
Some of them do that knowing most poor people will never get rich but they want to keep the myth going. If everyone understood the real obstacles poor people are up against, no one with a heart would want capitalism anymore. The rich do want it, though.
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
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.
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 ! :-)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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
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"
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.
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.
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?
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.
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 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.
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.
@@vickisnemeth7474 I think most people who automatically judge others down on their luck, are self centered and simply don't care. It's what I see in my family members who act that same way. Being judgmental is often an excuse not to help someone else without feeling guilt about it.
+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.
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!
+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 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.
***** 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
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.
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.
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.
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
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
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.
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.
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
This happens a lot with big you tubers and streamers and influencers who says easy to grow on social media all you have to do is “X”. But the only reason they think it’s easiest because they’re the ones that made it
I disagree to some extent. I grew a youtube channel before from 0 to getting millions of views and thousands of subs in about a year. To make sure it wasn't "luck", I did the same exact thing with 3 other channels in less the time. Another channel, I gained 12k subs and millions of view in 2 months. You can't just contribute it all to luck or whatever. If you understand the algorithm of any social media platform, you can grow fairly quickly.
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 =)
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.
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.
Another instance of survivor bias is arguing for the existence of a creator based on the improbable physical conditions that are vital for human life. For example, "Humans would only be able to survive in a very narrow 'Goldilocks zone' within the Solar System that is neither too near nor too far from the Sun. Yet despite the overwhelmingly small probability, here we are! The only reasonable conclusion is that there is a God" Of course this argument is invalid, because if Earth weren't in the Goldilocks zone, then we wouldn't be there to make that argument in the first place.
+Daniel Walsh More than that, if the earth weren't in the Goldilocks Zone, yet we were still here, that would be a much better argument for the existence of the divine, wouldn't you say? Clearly, our very existence would require an ongoing miracle.
+Daniel Walsh “This is rather as if you imagine a puddle waking up one morning and thinking, 'This is an interesting world I find myself in - an interesting hole I find myself in - fits me rather neatly, doesn't it? In fact it fits me staggeringly well, must have been made to have me in it!' This is such a powerful idea that as the sun rises in the sky and the air heats up and as, gradually, the puddle gets smaller and smaller, frantically hanging on to the notion that everything's going to be alright, because this world was meant to have him in it, was built to have him in it; so the moment he disappears catches him rather by surprise. I think this may be something we need to be on the watch out for.” (Douglas Adams)
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 !
not really. in german we have glück and freude, one means luck one means happiness. what youre rather talking about is the verb that can be used in both ways. (because the noun cant) glücklich sein - being lucky, glücklich sein, being happy
@@thesmallestdaltonbrother2176 Heeeeerrst was redest für nen Stuss da her?! Freude = Happiness ja. Glück = Happiness/Luck Es kann beides bedeuten. Jetzt mach nix peinliches. Kind bitte. ;D
@@Broockle dann übersetz mir mal bitte folgende sätze ins englische er hat glück gehabt. mit viel glück schaffst du es wenn du im lotto gewinnst hattest du viel glück er ist glücklich er freut sich über den hund und noch diese englischen sätze he had a lot of luck you can win the lottery by having a lot of luck with luck you can make it he has a lot of happiness in his life doing good things sparks happiness
There is luck involved in life, but that luck is factored into your potential. It takes hard work to live up to your potential. Living up to one's potential is all we can ask, and it is within everyone's power to do so.
In World War I, the introduction of the steel helmet coincided with an increase in head injuries and an increase in the time it took to recover from a head injury. Where the helmet causing this? Yes, sort of. Before the helmet, most head injuries were due to falls and / or debris. Minor cuts and scraps, that's it. If you were shot in the head, you weren't injured. You were killed. The helmets allowed those who were shot to survive, but it took a long time to recover.
I was thinking about this yesterday in terms of why it's so hard to know when somebody suffers from depression, because you only see them on days when they're able to pull themselves out of bed.
People go from zero to hero through a combination of hard work and change, then think everyone can do the same. They make the mistake that we all start out at the same level and are constrained to the same probabilities. Nothing wrong with hard work, but don't pretend it's all that's required. Great video.
It's entertaining how much this happens with media too. People talking about how music these days is all terrible drivel compared to the good ol' days of flawless rock n' roll... not realizing that there was just as much garbage music back then, it's just the big hits that stood out enough to survive until today. If you looked at just today's music that's likely to last decades, it's generally as good as the older stuff... although with much less LSD :P
+Stephen Furr because of ignorance ? i reckon caused by beliefs which elude from truth, truth that can be of servitude infinite and eternally, while as lies begin and end with doomness of some sort.... .
how are yall comments beneficial ? (perhaps reference , which tho was itself not helpful but thanks to Stephen it might be ) i stated an inquiry and hypothesis which got ignored ?
Great argument. It resembles the quote I like to repeat often, "History is written by the victors.", by Niccolò Machiavelli, and damn... how true this is :-S
Survivor bias is at its strongest when it comes to selective memories. "In the past everything was better. Better music. Better Movies. Every day was better and nice and interesting" Etc etc etc. When you compare the past with the present always keep in mind that you dont remember/think of the full past and that there is a reason why you think of the things you do.
You see this bias in the creationist logic of _"The Earth is a perfect distance from the sun to support human life"_. But that's because, due to evolution, everything unsuited to the environment dies, and the only things left are the ones that were (by chance) already suited to the environment.
+roidroid I like Douglas Adams's metaphor about a puddle. If the puddle could think it would wonder how is it possible that it fits perfectly into its hole. “This is rather as if you imagine a puddle waking up one morning and thinking, 'This is an interesting world I find myself in - an interesting hole I find myself in - fits me rather neatly, doesn't it? In fact it fits me staggeringly well, must have been made to have me in it!' This is such a powerful idea that as the sun rises in the sky and the air heats up and as, gradually, the puddle gets smaller and smaller, frantically hanging on to the notion that everything's going to be alright, because this world was meant to have him in it, was built to have him in it; so the moment he disappears catches him rather by surprise. I think this may be something we need to be on the watch out for.”
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. ua-cam.com/video/cmUR7bVahK4/v-deo.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.
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.
"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
Man, you really are one of the best content creators on UA-cam. Me and my brothers in Brazil love your videos :D
+Mateus Daniel heeeeeeey. I really like this channel too. Check out vsauce, its another great channel with similar content.
And i'm from brazil too. yay
hahaahaha
Brazil here too! This channel is awesome, but of course is just a channel that survived by luck among many others science channels that failed.
+Mateus Daniel Thanks man!
+Hermano Zenaide wow, that one was good!
I don't believe this could be applied to YT world, since we can always have new stuff, but some one should look at the data 'cause we still have the front page script.
as always, thanks for reading. (hu3)
+Mateus Daniel agreed, we could have some of these content on the brazilian YT by the way...
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
@@seanjhardy 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
I don't really like adding this to this (surprisingly nice for UA-cam) 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.
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.
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.
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.
Lol at the way he is talking to the camera as he walks past numerous "Silence please" signs.
Yeah, shows how terrible korea cops are
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.
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 UA-cam comment 🥲 my face hurts
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 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.
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.
Some of them do that knowing most poor people will never get rich but they want to keep the myth going. If everyone understood the real obstacles poor people are up against, no one with a heart would want capitalism anymore. The rich do want it, though.
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.
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.
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
Perfect! Steve Jobs, Bill Gates and... "that guy that founded Dell"
+kalevader You mean Michael what'izname? I missed that. So funny.
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 I like videos on this channel even more than on the other.
+Jorelplay agreed
da best
Yes!
hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh i agree
I disagree.
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.
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.
8:02 Man! I was ready for join your hippie commune.
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.
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.
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.
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 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
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"
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
"Past performance doesn't guarantee future success".
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.
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
☺
“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?
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.
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 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.
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.
@@vickisnemeth7474 I think most people who automatically judge others down on their luck, are self centered and simply don't care. It's what I see in my family members who act that same way.
Being judgmental is often an excuse not to help someone else without feeling guilt about it.
"All we need is a little energon and a lot of luck" - Optimus Prime.
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.
2:48 Shhh...for silence, please!
+Nidalevi It was quiet there, so Derek decided to shoot the video.
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 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!
This applies nicely to people who are amazed that the earth is so well-suited for life. See also: the anthropic principal.
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 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.
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
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.
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
I love all the people walking by like "what the hell is this guy doing?"
+Jason Is Awesome! The world needs more love!
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
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.
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!
Ya know.. as soon as you said 'survivor bias' the plane thing came to mind. Remember learning it on a design course. Good stuff.
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
"(...)- is the survivors who get to make the rules."
You're a legend.
I loved this video and the topic! And you are in Seoul!! Welcome to Seoul :)
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.
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.
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
This happens a lot with big you tubers and streamers and influencers who says easy to grow on social media all you have to do is “X”. But the only reason they think it’s easiest because they’re the ones that made it
I disagree to some extent. I grew a youtube channel before from 0 to getting millions of views and thousands of subs in about a year. To make sure it wasn't "luck", I did the same exact thing with 3 other channels in less the time. Another channel, I gained 12k subs and millions of view in 2 months. You can't just contribute it all to luck or whatever. If you understand the algorithm of any social media platform, you can grow fairly quickly.
@@painexotic3757 It would be much more believable if you used the channel that you are talking about in this comment to write this comment.
@@Kaledrone Believe what you want lol. I don't really care. Like I said, if you understand the algorithm of any website, you can hack it.
@@painexotic3757 hey bro just wanted to let you know a year later that you’re still full of shit 😭
@@slightkek And hey bro I wanted to let you know that youre an idiot responding to a year old comment.
Such a great way of explaining it! thanks for putting this together!
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 =)
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.
I started contemplate every night thinking about things because of this vlogs of yours.
We have to think more.
You wouldn't be saying that if you were dead.
What camera are you using? Barrel distortion, built-in stabilisation, large depth of field... GoPro 7?
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.
I remember reading somewhere that the reason old songs sound so good is that we only remember the best ones.
2:10 the sign behind says "silence please" then you hear people in the background, way louder than Derek HAHAHA
Another instance of survivor bias is arguing for the existence of a creator based on the improbable physical conditions that are vital for human life. For example, "Humans would only be able to survive in a very narrow 'Goldilocks zone' within the Solar System that is neither too near nor too far from the Sun. Yet despite the overwhelmingly small probability, here we are! The only reasonable conclusion is that there is a God" Of course this argument is invalid, because if Earth weren't in the Goldilocks zone, then we wouldn't be there to make that argument in the first place.
Great point
+Daniel Walsh More than that, if the earth weren't in the Goldilocks Zone, yet we were still here, that would be a much better argument for the existence of the divine, wouldn't you say? Clearly, our very existence would require an ongoing miracle.
+Mrluigifan102 indeed!
Daniel walsh, i love you
+Daniel Walsh
“This is rather as if you imagine a puddle waking up one morning and thinking, 'This is an interesting world I find myself in - an interesting hole I find myself in - fits me rather neatly, doesn't it? In fact it fits me staggeringly well, must have been made to have me in it!' This is such a powerful idea that as the sun rises in the sky and the air heats up and as, gradually, the puddle gets smaller and smaller, frantically hanging on to the notion that everything's going to be alright, because this world was meant to have him in it, was built to have him in it; so the moment he disappears catches him rather by surprise. I think this may be something we need to be on the watch out for.” (Douglas Adams)
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 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 !
In German the word for Luck and for Happiness are the same word. "Glück"
Same in Sweden and I've never realized the cultural implications of that until that very comment I just saw
not really.
in german we have glück and freude, one means luck one means happiness.
what youre rather talking about is the verb that can be used in both ways. (because the noun cant)
glücklich sein - being lucky, glücklich sein, being happy
@@thesmallestdaltonbrother2176
Heeeeerrst was redest für nen Stuss da her?! Freude = Happiness ja.
Glück = Happiness/Luck
Es kann beides bedeuten.
Jetzt mach nix peinliches. Kind bitte. ;D
@@Broockle
dann übersetz mir mal bitte folgende sätze ins englische
er hat glück gehabt.
mit viel glück schaffst du es
wenn du im lotto gewinnst hattest du viel glück
er ist glücklich
er freut sich über den hund
und noch diese englischen sätze
he had a lot of luck
you can win the lottery by having a lot of luck
with luck you can make it
he has a lot of happiness in his life
doing good things sparks happiness
There is luck involved in life, but that luck is factored into your potential. It takes hard work to live up to your potential. Living up to one's potential is all we can ask, and it is within everyone's power to do so.
In World War I, the introduction of the steel helmet coincided with an increase in head injuries and an increase in the time it took to recover from a head injury. Where the helmet causing this? Yes, sort of. Before the helmet, most head injuries were due to falls and / or debris. Minor cuts and scraps, that's it. If you were shot in the head, you weren't injured. You were killed. The helmets allowed those who were shot to survive, but it took a long time to recover.
+BrotherAlpha That's why when counting losses it's important to look at total casualties (dead AND wounded).
Also the hit area increased with helmet on which made it more likely to get hit by a bullet.
you never fail to enlighten me. thanks for all the great videos
Sign says "Shhh... for silence please" at 2:49. Just wanted to point that out...
I was thinking about this yesterday in terms of why it's so hard to know when somebody suffers from depression, because you only see them on days when they're able to pull themselves out of bed.
+Skrapion or even out of their rooms/homes. :O(-
+Skrapion Word
Yeah, it seems like hard work is necessary but not sufficient for success.
People go from zero to hero through a combination of hard work and change, then think everyone can do the same. They make the mistake that we all start out at the same level and are constrained to the same probabilities. Nothing wrong with hard work, but don't pretend it's all that's required. Great video.
I like to idea "it's the survivors who make the rules" a biased way. thanks for sharing...
2:49 on the left 'Shhh...for silence please' hahaha
+Jude Lau Good eye! He walked right by it and apparently didn't even see it.
Excellent video. Fair points and good delivery.
And here I thought luck was the intersection of preparation and opportunity.
THE GUY WHO MADE DELL LOL XD
I know. Poor guy. Whoever he is.
Michael Dell...
It's entertaining how much this happens with media too. People talking about how music these days is all terrible drivel compared to the good ol' days of flawless rock n' roll... not realizing that there was just as much garbage music back then, it's just the big hits that stood out enough to survive until today. If you looked at just today's music that's likely to last decades, it's generally as good as the older stuff... although with much less LSD :P
By far my favorite video on this channel
I lost count on how many times I watched it
History is written by the winners...
+Stephen Furr because of ignorance ? i reckon caused by beliefs which elude from truth, truth that can be of servitude infinite and eternally, while as lies begin and end with doomness of some sort.... .
+Stephen Furr Except for... The Mongols
+monev Excellent "Crash Course: World History" reference!
Oh god, I just had a flashback from Modern Warfare 2 of Shepherd saying "History is written by the victors"
how are yall comments beneficial ? (perhaps reference , which tho was itself not helpful but thanks to Stephen it might be ) i stated an inquiry and hypothesis which got ignored ?
allways great content good job!
Gosh, this video just randomly appeared to me here in 2023, and this is so interesting!
veritasium character development: 10/10
You shouldn't have to explain yourself at the end of the video there. Your concluding words were perfect.
+John Doe so many idiots around look at Trump lovers
Hard work and perseverance doesnt equal to success, but it do increase the chances to be successful
You're really clever and it's always a pleasure to watch your videos.
Great argument. It resembles the quote I like to repeat often, "History is written by the victors.", by Niccolò Machiavelli, and damn... how true this is :-S
Survivor bias is at its strongest when it comes to selective memories.
"In the past everything was better. Better music. Better Movies. Every day was better and nice and interesting" Etc etc etc.
When you compare the past with the present always keep in mind that you dont remember/think of the full past and that there is a reason why you think of the things you do.
What you teach and how you teach it, is inspirational.
You see this bias in the creationist logic of _"The Earth is a perfect distance from the sun to support human life"_.
But that's because, due to evolution, everything unsuited to the environment dies, and the only things left are the ones that were (by chance) already suited to the environment.
+roidroid I like Douglas Adams's metaphor about a puddle. If the puddle could think it would wonder how is it possible that it fits perfectly into its hole.
“This is rather as if you imagine a puddle waking up one morning and thinking, 'This is an interesting world I find myself in - an interesting hole I find myself in - fits me rather neatly, doesn't it? In fact it fits me staggeringly well, must have been made to have me in it!' This is such a powerful idea that as the sun rises in the sky and the air heats up and as, gradually, the puddle gets smaller and smaller, frantically hanging on to the notion that everything's going to be alright, because this world was meant to have him in it, was built to have him in it; so the moment he disappears catches him rather by surprise. I think this may be something we need to be on the watch out for.”
A great example of how easily you can use statistics to lie