The Curious Case of WWII Pilots

During World War II, the U.S. military faced a puzzling problem.

Planes were returning from battle with bullet holes spread out across their wings and Aircraft bodies. Engineers suggested reinforcing these areas to improve survival rates. It seemed obvious if these were the places taking the most damage, that’s where the armor should go.

But mathematician Abraham Wald saw the situation differently.

He realized they were looking at only the planes that returned safely. The real issue wasn’t the planes with bullet holes, those had survived. The planes that were hit in critical spots, like the engines or cockpit, never made it back.

Wald's insight? Reinforce the areas that had no bullet holes, that’s where the fatal damage happened.

This mental shortcut, focusing only on visible successes while ignoring unseen failures, is called survivorship bias. And guess what? It’s one of dozens of cognitive biases secretly shaping the way we think every day.

But are these biases really flaws in our thinking? Or could they actually be helping us survive and thrive?

let's first start with understating what are cognitive biases, and why do we have them?

Our brain is a supercomputer that processes 11 million bits of information per second.

Sounds impressive, right? Well, here's the catch, we can only consciously handle about 40 of those bits at a time. To manage this overwhelming flood of information, our brain relies on shortcuts.

These shortcuts are fast and often useful, but they come with a side effect: biases.

Cognitive biases are patterns of thinking that bend reality in ways that may feel right but are often wrong.

They aren’t random mistakes; they evolved to help us survive.

In prehistoric times, being able to quickly spot danger (even if it wasn’t real) or overvaluing what we already had (to avoid losing resources) often meant the difference between life and death. These mental habits worked well in the wild, but in today's complex, modern world, they can sometimes be very limiting.

Here are a few examples.

Survivorship Bias: The Invisible Failures
Ever wonder why success stories seem to dominate social media and self-help books? That’s survivorship bias at work. We tend to focus only on people who succeeded, forgetting the countless others who tried and failed.        

Why It’s Useful? It fuels optimism and encourages perseverance. Believing “I can succeed just like they did” can be motivating.

But ignoring failure rates leads to overconfidence. Many startups fail, but you only hear about the unicorns that sold their business to Google for an astounding amount of money.

Pro Tip: Next time you're inspired by someone’s success, ask yourself, “What’s missing from this story?” Understanding what doesn’t work is just as powerful as knowing what does.

Negativity Bias: Why One Bad Comment Stings More Than Ten Compliments? 
You just had fantastic day ruined by one minor criticism!  That’s Negativity Bias, our brain’s tendency to give more weight to bad experiences than good ones.        

It did keep our ancestors alive by making us hyper-aware of potential threats.

Negative experiences stick to our brains like Velcro. But Constant focus on the negative can distort our perspective and drain our motivation.

So… are biases Good or Bad?

The truth is, they’re both. Cognitive biases are like mental shortcuts, they save us time and energy, but sometimes they keep us stuck in a loop.

In certain situations, they help us survive, adapt, and thrive. In others, they quietly sabotage our decisions, relationships, and well-being.

Instead of fighting these biases, the real trick is to become aware of them. Once we know how they operate, we can pause, question our instincts, and decide if our brain is guiding us wisely.

It's not easy, for sure. But it does get us out of automatic thinking, opening real opportunities to expend our narrow look at life.

Now that’s thinking like a genius.