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@The_Rumpus is open for essay submissions until February 28, so here’s a #RumpusEssays thread in which our amazing editors share what they would like to see in submissions. Give them a follow and send your essay our way via @submittable

Features Editor @happiestwerther is “still (forever) in love with the researched essays that teach me something about a subject while I also learn about a narrator.” #RumpusEssays

Assistant Features Editor @sarahkasbeer would like to see “essays with unexpected engines / innovative structures / emotional and intellectual depth / good ole narrative tension.” #RumpusEssays

Features Editor @kaytaybayy: “I'd love to see essays that are imbued with kinetic energy. I don't care what they're about. Just sweep me into your experiences and thoughts. Compel me to shake my dust off.” #RumpusEssays

Asst Feat Ed @DJ_theoretical: "I’d love to read about that weird, niche topic you’re obsessed with. Your Pog collection, those ribbon candies that seemingly only grandmas buy, your new obscure hobby. Distract me from the horrible big picture with your hyperfixations."

Survivorship Bias 101

History is written by the victors. But if we exclusively focus on these successes, we allow survivorship bias to distort our understanding of the world.

But what is "survivorship bias" and how does it work?

Here's Survivorship Bias 101!

👇👇👇

1/ First, a few definitions.

Survivorship bias is the logical error of concentrating on survivors (successes) and ignoring casualties (failures).

When we do so, we miss the true "base rates" of survival (the actual probability of success) and arrive at flawed conclusions.

2/ When we completely ignore failures, we lose our ability to correctly identify the differences between successes and failures.

Put simply, exclusively focusing on successes may actually inhibit our ability to identify (and replicate) the actions that led to such success.

3/ Cicero wrote on the topic over 2,000 years ago.

An atheist named Diagoras is shown portraits of people who prayed and were saved from death at sea as proof of God's existence.

Diagoras replies, "I see those who were saved, but where are those painted who were shipwrecked?"

4/ Cicero cuts right to the point - we cannot conclude that prayer led to being saved from the sea if we ignore those who prayed and then drowned.

Survivorship bias can lead to a deeply-flawed understanding of cause-and-effect relationships.

Let's look at some examples.

@cain_nate My friend Nate Cain and I have worked hundreds of hours with various politicians and legal groups trying to explain the election laws and how they fit together. There are many misperceptions of what happened during this election and what it means.

Simply put, our election laws are an intricate tapestry designed to ensure accuracy and prevent fraud. They work together like parts of a car. But when certain parts fail, the car is just a hunk of scrap iron and plastic. In this case critical parts failed.
2/

You do not have to prove fraud or intent, you just have to show that the election officials were unable to conduct an election that met the law and relevant certification requirements. In this case, the election does not come close to meeting accuracy requirements.
3/

These specifications are found deep in laws like FISMA, HAVA, and state adoptions of EAC guidance. 1 ballot error out of 125,000 or 1 position read error out of 500,000. Just look at the discrepancies between incoming ballot counts and total votes, the system fails.
4/

It is worse in the the swing states in Democrat strongholds but it is bad in many places. You add the apparent losses of ballots through the Mail and error rates in the ‘system’ are staggering. Why do we have these rules? Sure it is to prevent fraud, but......
5/