survivorship-bias

Survivorship-bias is the human-made cognitive error of drawing conclusions from a visible set of successes while the unseen set of failures is systematically excluded from analysis. It is defined by three parameters: (1) selection filter — a process that allows only some entities through while eliminating others; (2) visibility asymmetry — the survivors are observed and studied while the eliminated entities are invisible or under-studied; (3) inferential error — conclusions are drawn as if the visible set were representative of the full population. Persistence mechanism: taught in statistical education, business case-study methodology, and cognitive psychology training. [formal: bias cognitio | substrate: mind | horizon: a life | explicit: yes | epoch: 0.01]