Scientific Definition
Generalizing from winners while ignoring identical losers.
Plain-English Definition
Generalizing from winners while ignoring identical losers.
Feynman Explanation
Founder advice is the most expensive selection bias in business.
Core Principle
Generalizing from winners while ignoring identical losers.
Mechanisms
Generalizing from winners while ignoring identical losers.
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Inputs (Triggers)
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Outputs (Behaviors)
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Behavioral Signature
Founder advice is the most expensive selection bias in business.
Examples
- Copying the habits of breakout startups; the same habits killed many others.
- Best-practice frameworks built on survivor data alone.
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Famous Experiments
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Design Principles
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Measurement Approaches
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Evidence
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The Perverse Incentive Lens™
How this behavior is exploited — and how to redesign around it.
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Interactive Mini Network
Click any neighbor to re-center the graph and follow the threads of connection.
Knowledge Graph Neighbors
Auto-linked to the rest of the Human Behavior Taxonomy by family, domain, dimension, and shared keywords.
A single story used as proof of a general claim.
n=1 generalized to n=everyone.
Quoting only the studies that support the position.
Selecting only the data that supports the conclusion.
Sweeping conclusions from a small sample.
Drawing a target around wherever the bullets landed.
Attacking the person rather than the argument.
If A then B; B happened; therefore A.
It's true because authority says so.
Common sense says so, therefore it's true.
Believing something is true because of the consequences of its truth.
Substituting feeling for argument.