In daily life, because triumph is made more visible than failure, you systematically overestimate your chances of succeeding. As an outsider, you succumb to an illusion, and you mistake how minuscule the probability of success really is

Survivorship bias means this : people systematically overestimate their chances of success. Guard against it by frequently visiting the graves of once-promising projects, investments and careers.It's a sad walk, but one that should clear your mind

The media is not interested in digging around in the graveyards of the unsuccessful. Nor is this it's job. To elude the Survivorship bias, you must do the digging yourself.

Be it a musician, a writer, or anything you aspire to become, you will only come accross the names of people who succeeded in their lives. But you'll never come across the burial grounds which houses 10,000 times more aspirants who couldn't make it to the finish line.

On your journey to success, it's easy to look at the successful person and judge how easy success is. But you don't consider the fact that thousands of people just like you are also persuing the same thing. How many of them actually made it till the end?

Why You Should Visit Cemeteries 

Rolf Dobelli talks here about Survivorship Bias, how it affects our decision making and actual percentage of success.

Have you ever . . .<ul> <li> Invested time in something that, in hindsight, just wasn't worth it?</li> <li> Paid too much in an eBay auction?</li> <li> Continued to do something you knew was bad for you?</li> <li> Sold stocks too late, or too early?</li> <li> Taken credit for success, but blamed failure on external circumstances?</li> <li> Backed the wrong horse?</li></ul>These are examples of what the author calls cognitive biases, simple errors all of us make in day-to-day thinking. But by knowing what they are and how to identify them, we can avoid them and make better choices: whether in dealing with personal problems or business negotiations, trying to save money or earn profits, or merely working out what we really want in life—and strategizing the best way to get it.Already an international bestseller, The Art of Thinking Clearly distills cutting-edge research from behavioral economics, psychology, and neuroscience into a clever, practical guide for anyone who's ever wanted to be wiser and make better decisions. A novelist, thinker, and entrepreneur, Rolf Dobelli deftly shows that in order to lead happier, more prosperous lives, we don't need extra cunning, new ideas, shiny gadgets, or more frantic hyperactivity—all we need is less irrationality.Simple, clear, and always surprising, this indispensable book will change the way you think and transform your decision making—at work, at home, every day. From why you shouldn't accept a free drink to why you should walk out of a movie you don't like, from why it's so hard to predict the future to why you shouldn't watch the news, The Art of Thinking Clearly helps solve the puzzle of human reasoning.

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A world-class thinker counts the 100 ways in which humans behave irrationally, showing us what we can do to recognize and minimize these “thinking errors” to make better decisions and have a better life Despite the best of intentions, humans are notoriously bad—that is, irrational—when it comes to making decisions and assessing risks and tradeoffs. Psychologists and neuroscientists refer to these distinctly human foibles, biases, and thinking traps as “cognitive errors.” Cognitive errors are systematic deviances from rationality, from optimized, logical, rational thinking and behavior. We make these errors all the time, in all sorts of situations, for problems big and small: whether to choose the apple or the cupcake; whether to keep retirement funds in the stock market when the Dow tanks, or whether to take the advice of a friend over a stranger. The “behavioral turn” in neuroscience and economics in the past twenty years has increased our understanding of how we think and how we make decisions. It shows how systematic errors mar our thinking and under which conditions our thought processes work best and worst. Evolutionary psychology delivers convincing theories about why our thinking is, in fact, marred. The neurosciences can pinpoint with increasing precision what exactly happens when we think clearly and when we don’t.Drawing on this wide body of research, The Art of Thinking Clearly is an entertaining presentation of these known systematic thinking errors--offering guidance and insight into everything why you shouldn’t accept a free drink to why you SHOULD walk out of a movie you don’t like it to why it’s so hard to predict the future to why shouldn’t watch the news. The book is organized into 100 short chapters, each covering a single cognitive error, bias, or heuristic. Examples of these concepts include: Reciprocity, Confirmation Bias, The It-Gets-Better-Before-It-Gets-Worse Trap, and the Man-With-A-Hammer Tendency. In engaging prose and with real-world examples and anecdotes, The Art of Thinking Clearly helps solve the puzzle of human reasoning.

Rolf Dobelli is a Swiss author and businessman. He began his writing career as a novelist in 2002, but he is best known internationally for his bestselling non-fiction The Art of Thinking Clearly (2011, English 2013), for which The Times has called him "the self-help guru the Germans love".

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Survivorship Bias