“The Collider Bias Theory of (Not Quite) Everything” by Jack_S

Quick Summary

• Collider bias and Berkson's paradox are pretty common and often neglected
• I think it's not just a niche statistical concept: it explains a bunch of interesting stuff, and has some use in applied rationality
• Scott Alexander has written about something similar, and there's a LW post that explains some of the findings in an accurate but slightly dry way. This post tries to make it clear and more readable

Preamble

It's your first day in prison.

Despite your insistence that the man who approached you and asked for your wallet in exchange for preventing an infinitely large amount of future suffering had in fact been mugging you, your claim of self-defence fell through.

The judge tells you that, judging by the severity of your crime and your assessed mental stability, you will be sent to a medium-security prison for three years. Each prisoner has one [...]

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Outline:

(00:11) Quick Summary

(00:39) Preamble

(01:42) Back to school

(08:06) This is relatively well-known, right?

(09:57) Towards a theory of everything?

(14:06) Does this explain anything?

(15:18) The elite exceptions

(17:08) The bottom-end exceptions

The original text contained 1 footnote which was omitted from this narration.

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First published:

August 16th, 2025

Source:

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/yhEES8AH8MirLroij/the-collider-bias-theory-of-not-quite-everything

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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