Clear Sight ｜ 一日一镜
Survivorship Bias
幸存者偏差
The Idea
You study only what made it through, because the failures are invisible.
The survivors are not a random sample — they are the ones that could be counted.
The survivors are not a random sample — they are the ones that could be counted.
我们能观察到的，只有活下来的那些。
失败的早就消失了，根本没法算进去。
失败的早就消失了，根本没法算进去。
Where It Comes From
Abraham Wald, Columbia University, 1943: armour the holes you do not see, not the ones you do — the planes shot through engines never returned to show their wounds.
瓦尔德的结论是：弹孔少的地方才需要加固，那里中弹的飞机根本没回来。
Everyday Example
"Successful people all did X" tells you nothing until you find how many who also did X failed and disappeared — without the denominator, the pattern is noise.
说"成功者都这样做"，没用——
我更想知道同样这样做、却消失不见的人有多少。
我更想知道同样这样做、却消失不见的人有多少。
Where It Misleads
The famous lone-genius story has no documentary evidence; the bullet-hole diagram is a modern illustration, not Wald's. The bias is also invoked lazily, to dismiss any success without doing the work of finding the missing data.
那个"孤胆天才纠正将军"的故事，根本没有文献支撑。
而且这个词也常被随手甩出，变成懒人拒绝认真找数据的借口。
而且这个词也常被随手甩出，变成懒人拒绝认真找数据的借口。
Shadow
a page from the notebook
21 · viii · 2026
21 · viii · 2026