Publish at May 29 2024 Updated February 25 2026
You've probably heard a relative or acquaintance tell how a clairvoyant predicted an event or how a healer stopped pain at a distance. There's something fascinating about these fantastic stories. Wouldn't we all like to live in a magical world? However, all this can be debunked with a simple phrase: "Okay, but what about those for whom it didn't work?"
This is what we call survivor bias. Our brain retains what reinforces its ideas, while omitting a significant proportion of the silent evidence. A lottery advertisement in France used the slogan that 100% of winners had played...
Technically, this is true, but how many thousands, or even millions, of people will have bought a ticket without winning a penny? All the stories of these great personalities who managed to emerge from a difficult environment to prosper in their field are great, but they obscure all those who didn't meet the right person, didn't find themselves in the ideal opportunities, etc. The survivor bias is therefore a very powerful tool.
Survivor bias is therefore a mechanism we need to guard against more often, because it's part of everyday life, whether in advertising, charlatans or even political discourse.
Running time: 9min22
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