I don't want to criticize the survivorship bias, but i'm finding it hard to work with the example used. Isn't focusing on (great white) sharks at the shore based on the fact that more people will encounter a shark at the shore, and therefore should be primarily informed about these encounters?
I think the real problem with the tremendous fear people have of shark attacks is that so many people do survive to tell the tale precisely because they don't particularly care for what me and my sons classify as "land food."
Great White sharks are eating machines, not killing machines. Of course, things tend to die in the process of being eaten, but they aren't looking to murder humans. They are looking to feed.
And it just so happens that they have a giant mouth full of a zillion teeth, so when they go to taste you and see if you are anything tasty, they rip off a leg.
And we know they don't really want to eat you in part because of the relatively high percentage of stories that end with "And then my leg washed up on shore three days later."
So the Great White isn't a murderous killing machine. It is a callous, heartless Cthuloid Horror that doesn't give a damn about you at all and often doesn't so much as deign to swallow the arm or leg they ripped off while wondering if you were a seal.
This is why we fixate on them and make horror movies about them and so forth. If they were actually killing machines who liked eating people, we just wouldn't go in the water at beaches because the incidence of shark attacks is actually so remarkably low precisely because we aren't what they really want to eat. If they really liked feeding on "land food," the incidence of shark attacks on humans would be so high that people just wouldn't go in the water -- because it is shockingly common for there to be sharks nearby in the waters of a crowded beach and they just aren't chomping on people.
> Some groups, such as Fins Attached, Shark Savers, IUCN, Shark Angels, Shark Whisperer and the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, discourage consumption of the [shark fin] soup due to concerns with the world's shark population and how sharks are inhumanely finned alive and returned to the ocean, unable to swim, hunt or survive. The prevalence of shark finning and the sustainability of shark species are both debated.
If they were actually killing machines, all we would need to do is stop holding back and sharks would go away.
I'm fascinated by survivorship bias, because once you become aware of it, you realise how pervasive it is. The books Good to Great and in Search of Excellence stand out as two very obvious examples, yet they continue to be held up as brilliant business books (and interestingly Farnam Street is a big Jim Collins fan).
I wrote about the phenomenon more here, including more examples from the likes of Buffet and Taleb: http://www.richardhughesjones.com/survivorship-bias/
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[ 1.7 ms ] story [ 21.2 ms ] threadSeems a question of base rates of attacks, rather than survivorship bias.
Great White sharks are eating machines, not killing machines. Of course, things tend to die in the process of being eaten, but they aren't looking to murder humans. They are looking to feed.
And it just so happens that they have a giant mouth full of a zillion teeth, so when they go to taste you and see if you are anything tasty, they rip off a leg.
And we know they don't really want to eat you in part because of the relatively high percentage of stories that end with "And then my leg washed up on shore three days later."
So the Great White isn't a murderous killing machine. It is a callous, heartless Cthuloid Horror that doesn't give a damn about you at all and often doesn't so much as deign to swallow the arm or leg they ripped off while wondering if you were a seal.
This is why we fixate on them and make horror movies about them and so forth. If they were actually killing machines who liked eating people, we just wouldn't go in the water at beaches because the incidence of shark attacks is actually so remarkably low precisely because we aren't what they really want to eat. If they really liked feeding on "land food," the incidence of shark attacks on humans would be so high that people just wouldn't go in the water -- because it is shockingly common for there to be sharks nearby in the waters of a crowded beach and they just aren't chomping on people.
If they were actually killing machines, all we would need to do is stop holding back and sharks would go away.
The example I've seen most often is how Abraham Wald contributed to WW2 combat aircraft survival. [0]
[0]http://www.ams.org/publicoutreach/feature-column/fc-2016-06