Thank you. Survivorship bias. I sound like a drone when I talk about this in my social circles. Either I do a poor job explaining this or some people are just never going to be able to wrap their heads around this. This and the 'if I only had a good idea I'd be a successful startup' meme are two peeves I try and argue against in vain..
Like many biases Hindsight/Survivorship really really feels right to many people, especially if they're not terribly aware of logical and cognitive biases. By contrast what you're saying to them requires them to think in a new way, and maybe let go of some deeply held beliefs.
Besides, who wants to believe that we know so much less than we like to pretend, and in fact the books they might have read and loved are just... bull?
