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This is Part 2 of my “20 Years of Defending Serendipity” – series
The 999 other times someone skipped an important meeting to pursue a stranger they felt drawn to? Those stories don’t get told—because they didn’t lead to anything memorable. Or because they led to failure, rejection, or plain embarrassment.
Serendipity isn’t some romantic, hedonistic leap of faith or “follow your bliss” fantasy. It’s a quality of mind, as Robert Merton defined it—a fusion of awareness, sagacity, and good fortune. It involves frequent valuable discoveries, often while seeking something else—not a single impulsive decision that just happened to work. Today, serendipity is being marketed like a lifestyle supplement. It’s become a brand for dreamy risk-taking and glossy “live your truth” narratives.I call it a Hedonistic Hijack of Serendipity
The most illustrative example of survivorship bias is surely World War II Plane Armor Story – a masterclass in seeing what’s misising During World War II, Allied forces wanted to improve the survival rate of bomber planes returning from missions. Engineers at first began analyzing the bullet holes in the planes that came back, intending to reinforce the parts of the aircraft that had taken the most damage.
Their logic: these areas clearly needed extra armor, since they were frequently hit. But then came Abraham Wald, a statistician working for the classified Statistical Research Group (SRG) in New York. He pointed out the crucial error: they were only looking at the planes that survived. The ones that were hit in other areas—such as the engine, cockpit, or fuel tank—never made it back to be studied. Wald’s insight:
“The bullet holes in the returning planes show you where they can take damage and still survive. The areas with no bullet holes? That’s where a hit is fatal. That’s where you armor.”
By shifting the focus from what was visible to what was missing, Wald exposed the core danger of survivorship bias: you’re drawing conclusions from the survivors and ignoring the invisible failures.
Just like we focus on the ‘lucky’ Steve Jobs story—where a skipped meeting led to lifelong love—we’re drawn to the “planes that made it home.” We forget to ask:
What about the others? What about the skipped meetings that led to nothing—or worse?
World War II Plane Armor lesson and the over-romanticized INC Magazine article about Job’s love affair apply perfectly how important it is to truly understand serendipity. You must account for the stories that didn’t make it into the books, the blog posts, or the brand mythology. Survivorship bias is like applauding the tightrope walker halfway across… without noticing the dozens who fell and vanished into the netherworld of forgotten LinkedIn pages and unpaid invoices.
Part 3 of “20 Years of Defending Serendipity” – will be out tomorrow. The intriguing title will be : “Coincidensity Is Not Serendipity – A Note to the Conceptual Dilutionists”
