# Survivorship bias When we only focus on those who have succeeded, we fail to see all those who did not. It's a logical error that many people make, in various situations. It leads to the wrong conclusions. People feel overly optimistic about some things because they overlook failures, and actual risks. For instance, in the startup ecosystem, stories of successful entrepreneurs lead people to think that success is "easy". But it completely ignores all the failures. Here's a popular representation of this bias: ![[Survivorship bias - famous representation.png]] This diagram shows where World War II planes were hit. When looking at it, one may think that the clusters in red are where the planes should be reinforced. But this says nothing about all the planes that crashed, and never returned. ## References - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias - https://www.britannica.com/science/survivorship-bias - https://thedecisionlab.com/biases/survivorship-bias