Understanding survivor bias


My dad always liked to say "There's no fool like an old fool", and as I myself drift into my senior years I ponder how easy it is to draw foolish conclusions about what we've done, and how we managed to live so long, and the worst of it is what's called a "survivor bias". I see it all of the time, and while these old people certainly aren't fools, their logic is very foolish. I'll see if I can explain.

Back in the 1960s, I didn't wear a bicycle helmet, and I survived. In fact, I've fallen off of a bicycle many times and not wearing a helmet didn't kill me. My head didn't impact the asphalt, and I was able to ride another day. The survival bias logic is that there's no reason to wear a bicycle helmet.

Here's another one: As a kid I never wore seatbelts in the car, and I survived. So, following the logic, seat belts aren't necessary. I'm sure that you can think of a lot more, and if you can't you may just want to hang around with someone who looks back at their youth and decides that something nowadays isn't necessary because they survived just fine without it.

And the reason that this is called a "survivor bias" is that it can only be spoken by people who have survived. The people who died, of course, are unable to speak up. And either people have never known someone who died because of not wearing a seatbelt, or some other conclusion is drawn such as "it was just their time to go".

Back when I used to visit junk yards scrounging for parts for my old cars, I would always stop and look at the patterns on the windshields, caused by impact. The people whose faces made them probably didn't survive, but they were able to send a message to me anyway. I buckled up on my way home.

Image at the top of this post: My MG in 1979. It had no safety features, certainly not side-impact protection, and I survived. And I was just lucky, that's all. I was wearing a seat belt, because I wanted to survive.
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