Examine survivorship bias from "summary" of The Art of Thinking Clearly: Better Thinking, Better Decisions by Rolf Dobelli

Survivorship bias encourages too much optimism as only successful strategies and results are pictured whereas failures may be either ignored or downplayed. This can lead us to make overconfident decisions inmarketing, investments and countless other areas of life.

Survivors are people, companies, ideas that have successfully stayed alive despite difficulty or adversity. Survivorship bias looks to these entities for guidance. It occurs when lessons based on survivors are applied to explain what happened, without considering those which did not survive.

Without analysing the rate of failure prior to any successful outcomes, we cannot accurately assess the chance of success in future, putting our future endeavours at risk. Therefore, it is important to consider both outcomes in order to gain an accurate understanding of successes and failures occurring throughout society.

To avoid being misled by survivorship bias, detailed research into initial population size should be conducted from before taking stock of the existing survivors. Moreover, acknowledging the outliers - the successes and the failures, is essential for developing sound judgement.

We tend to give more credit to the winning team than they perhaps deserved and not to pay enough attention to the failures who wouldn't receive accolades. As a result, it’s easy to draw false conclusions regarding the success and failure of various entities.

Acknowledging why certain individuals failed is just as beneficial as examining their successful counterparts – this viewpoint can make all the difference in terms of learning valuable lessons when striving towards our own goals.