OPINION • Feb 21, 2021
The Warplane riddle...
This article is largely inspired by a YouTube video that I came across a few months back. It is about an eye-opening research, and the riddle is the research. Let’s start.
It is world war 2. The Allied and the Axis powers are building tens of thousands of warplanes each. America’s Columbia University is researching how to make better and stronger warplanes to beat Germany. As part of the process, they are studying the current planes in their fleet for their weaknesses. So, they mapped the distribution of the bullet holes on their plane’s surface. The final result somewhat looked like this.
Now here is the riddle. What should the American plane manufacturers do to make their warplanes better and stronger?
Take some time to think about this. If you go with your first gut instinct for this question, you will get this one wrong.
This problem is about the survivorship fallacy. Let’s get to those in detail later. Now the proper answer. One, it is equally probable for a bullet across the entire surface area of the plane, at least in specific ring cross-sections. Because, any gun that shoots from the ground or another plane cannot hit at that accuracy, since countless variables are affecting the trajectory of the bullet from that distance. And two, the bullet holes we are seeing are of only the planes that survived the war up until that point. Meaning, the bullets that hit the places that we are not seeing must have destroyed the airplanes. Look at the picture again. The places where are there are no bullet holes are critical spots. Engines, cockpit, and the rear end of the fuselage where the fuel tank is.
The answer is that one has to provide additional shielding to the places where the bullet holes are not present. Adding shielding to the places where bullet holes are at best redundant, at worst, dead weight that slows the plane down.
if you got this right. Well and good. If you got this wrong, not a big deal. Very few could guess it at first, that too only if they have read something about human fallacies.
However, the riddle is not the point of the article. It is about the much deeper philosophy about the lens through which we view the world and interpret events. This fallacy is so deeply ingrained in us so that we misinterpret most of the this we see. Like Evolution, Technology, Businesses, Celebrities, Sports, and many more.
Evolution is all about survival. People don’t see that usually. That is why people believe giraffes evolved when a deer jumping to reach a branch or that a dude of my skin color will get whiter in a couple of years in a colder place, let alone a couple of months. I have written about evolution extensively in an older blog article. But what I will say is this. There is a significant misunderstanding about evolution because of this fallacy.
Or take sports. A large number of people believe that playing basketball makes you grow taller. It is false. While it is true that playing basketball can add an inch or two to your height, but so can most other sports. Think again about this with the concept I am talking about. Yes, it has all to do with survival.
The nature of Basketball, as a sport, gives a significant advantage to taller players. As children, a lot of kids start playing basketball. With time, some grow taller, some don’t. The smaller players, because of the disadvantage, with time, quit playing, as they cannot perform at the level of taller players or compensate the height, they must have acquired enormous skill. That’s rare too. It all has to do with genetics.
The same is true for every sport there is. Why do you think most marathon championship-level runners are from Kenya? Because a subset of the Kenyan population evolved with thin body frames and narrow feet for a different reason - heat conservation -, that makes them efficient for marathons. Almost all sports can be explained by this phenomenon. Genes play a substantial role in sports. Next time, be wary of when watching Edhirneechal or any other sports person who says they are where they are only because they worked more than anyone else. For the most part, they are gifted with good genes and a great amount of luck.
The same is also true in business. A lot of people believe Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, or more recently Elon Musk are the smartest minds on the planet, and they are the sole reason for the success of their respective companies. The truth is thousands of other entrepreneurs probably started around the same time, and most of their companies got folded out of misfortunes or mistakes. So, for the most part, they are lucky and survived. Seeing them, if you think entrepreneurship is the fastest way to wealth, you are seriously mistaken. Bill Gates is the only one who has openly acknowledged this luck. Most are still narcissistic. But actually, that is among the reasons for their success, but one can not get any meaningful inferences out of their narcissism.
Don’t take me wrong. I don’t agree with the other school of thought that says it’s all luck and genes either. My belief is a mix of both. Persistence and hard work surely pay off, but not always the way you expect it to pay off. One quote you might have heard clearly and lucidly articulates my thinking is this.
“The more persistent you are, the luckier you get”
We see just a small proportion of the things that happen. Concluding just from seeing the survivors is wrong. So before inferring anything, giving thought about what we are not seeing is real wisdom.