They Do Not Make Them Like They Used To

Everyone has an old hammer or a grandparent’s radio that still works. So were old things simply built better?

Maybe some were. But we need to be careful, because the shoddy ones are gone. The landfill does not hold a reunion. What survives to be admired is a filtered sample, and judging from it is called survivorship bias.

Where else it hides

• Business advice: we study the companies that made it, and rarely the ones that tried the same bold moves and folded.
• Investment funds: funds that closed after poor results often vanish from the list, which flatters the average of the ones remaining.
• Old music: the hits of any decade sound better than today’s radio partly because the forgettable songs have been forgotten.

The question to ask

Whenever you are shown a group of winners, ask: Who is missing from this picture, and how would they change it? The thing you cannot see is often the most important data you do not have.

It does not mean the old hammer is bad. It is a lovely hammer. It just cannot testify for the ones that broke.