Goldsmith: 'The Secret' is ridiculous and relies entirely on survivorship bias
Marshall Goldsmith · Marshall Goldsmith: The Essentials Of Leadership · Jul 12, 2022 · at 1:14:15
Executive coach Marshall Goldsmith contrasts environmental determinism with manifestation culture while discussing human agency and behavioral conditioning.
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“Now there's a ridiculous book called The Secret. Did you ever read that book, The Secret? No. It's a ridiculous book. It sold seven million copies or more. And the essence of the book is, the secret is, if I envision it will happen. See, that's it. That's the secret. I'll tell you what the secret is. If I, you sold seven million copies. If I envision it will happen. And they have all this studies they've done. Well, like Jimmy wanted to win the basketball team, basketball game, their championship, and he envisioned and happened. And Mary wanted to be a movie star and she envisioned it would happen. And Harry had cancer and he envisioned it went away and it did. By the way, every story in the book is true. Here's the problem. They didn't interview the dead people. They didn't interview the thousand waitresses in Hollywood who envisioned being movie stars, and they didn't interview the basketball team that lost. From a mathematical perspective, this is called the survivor bias. Well, you know, they did this, they are successful. Yeah, you did this too, and you're a complete failure. So, you know, if you envision it will happen. Well, if you envision things, you probably increase the odds are going to happen, but there's certainly no guarantee it's going to happen because you envision it. I mean, that's to me childish.”
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