Understanding survivor bias


As someone who enjoys history, I often hear from people who express "survivor bias", like in the meme I just found on Pinterest. It's a bit of flawed logic, and if you've ever been puzzled about it, I'd like to take the time to explain.

It could be playing on a playground with sharp metal edges, or riding in a car without seatbelts, or not wearing a bicycle helmet, or any of thousands of things that people survive. And the people that survive get to say, "See, I did this, and I'm alive!", which seems to imply that these things really weren't all that dangerous, or that these people have some type of superpowers that kids today don't have. Unfortunately, the people who died from these things can't say that - because they're dead.

When I was a kid in the 1960s nobody wore seatbelts, and I still have the chipped tooth from hitting my face on the dashboard of our car. I also fell off of some monkey bars when I was a kid and broke my left wrist, which healed up, and of course I didn't die. The list goes on and on, and I won't bore with with things that I survived, but since I'm here writing this right now you that know that I didn't die. I survived, so I get to say these things. When I die, my voice will be silenced.

If you've never seen how ridiculous a survivor bias statement is, I understand. It does take a step in logic to see it, and some people either can't, or have never tried. So I won't criticize people who make this mistake, I will simply smile and agree. If you survived something very dangerous in your childhood, please let me know, and if you didn't, and you're dead, I'll understand.
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