The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable · chapter 4 · id the-black-swan-c4-06-taleb-uses-the-example-of-casa
“Taleb uses the example of Casanova's memoirs to illustrate silent evidence: we read the memoirs of successful adventurers but never hear from the countless others who took similar risks and died in obscurity.”
holdsconfidence: high⚠ extracted by pipeline, re-audit pending
Receipts
Project Gutenberg: The Memoirs of Jacques Casanova de Seingaltsource alive
Casanova's memoirs span twelve volumes covering his life from 1725-1798, chronicling adventures across Europe. The work is presented as the account of a successful risk-taker who survived to tell his tale.
Farnam Street: Survivorship Biassource alive
Survivorship bias occurs when we focus on the survivors and mistakenly conclude that their strategies or characteristics were the cause of their success. We never hear from the thousands of others who took similar risks and failed.
The Decision Lab: Survivorship Biassource alive
There are thousands of failures for every big success, but failure stories are not as widely shared as triumph stories. This leads to a distorted picture where success appears more common and achievable than it actually is.
This claim is a stable, citable object. If you can falsify a verdict, tell us — corrections are loud here.