Great post! I've always been fascinated by the different types of biases and this one in particular is one of the most overlooked ones.
But there is something important to point out. Survivorship bias is only applicable when there is a strong correlation between the failure and the components of the system you're analyzing. E.g. When it comes to aircraft, the damage to their different components is strictly correlated to the crash, another example: when the brodie helment was introduced, there was a dramatic rise in field hospitals admissions of severe head injury victims, but it was because they were now surviving to the same hits and they made it to the field hospital. The correlation between the death and where are the entry point of the shots located is very strong too.
I don't think that is the case for most of the feedback though, because everything is more subjective and each problem is a whole different world for each person which depends on their background, situation, platform, context, etc. The correlation between the failure of a library or an application and their features or issues, while relevant, is not that strong and objective. For some people it may be the platform, for others the design and for others the speed and for the most part is actually external factors (like the time, location, context, etc).
That being said, it may still be applicable for specific cases, like a particular objectively killer feature or a tangible issue, and we should always keep it in mind!
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Great post! I've always been fascinated by the different types of biases and this one in particular is one of the most overlooked ones.
But there is something important to point out. Survivorship bias is only applicable when there is a strong correlation between the failure and the components of the system you're analyzing. E.g. When it comes to aircraft, the damage to their different components is strictly correlated to the crash, another example: when the brodie helment was introduced, there was a dramatic rise in field hospitals admissions of severe head injury victims, but it was because they were now surviving to the same hits and they made it to the field hospital. The correlation between the death and where are the entry point of the shots located is very strong too.
I don't think that is the case for most of the feedback though, because everything is more subjective and each problem is a whole different world for each person which depends on their background, situation, platform, context, etc. The correlation between the failure of a library or an application and their features or issues, while relevant, is not that strong and objective. For some people it may be the platform, for others the design and for others the speed and for the most part is actually external factors (like the time, location, context, etc).
That being said, it may still be applicable for specific cases, like a particular objectively killer feature or a tangible issue, and we should always keep it in mind!