Combating Survivorship Bias

Hi All,

Just wanted to bring this up because I haven’t seen it mentioned in several threads where it could be applicable. There is a concept in statistics called ‘survivorship bias’ whereby data that is presumed to be representative is actually highly filtered by a selection process. The famous example was a study of flak damage on WWII bomber aircraft. Data scientists plotted exactly where planes had been hit by enemy AA fire and found that there were areas of the plane that almost never had any damage. Some engineers were planning on pulling armor away from those areas and distributing it in the places that were hit more often before some smart guy said “no, you actually need to put more armor in the places where you RARELY see damage.” His point was- the planes that were hit in those spots never made it back to be measured, because they had crashed.

On this site, we are going to see a huge over-representation of people posting that have had success in growing their penis. People who don’t have success are likely to stop posting or never post at all.

I’m not saying that this is actually the case, but I think a forum like this could exist in a world where PE was unsuccessful for 75%+ of men. Given how awesome the results of PE can be, the 25% who had success would be stoked enough to post a lot and provide lots of encouragement. I don’t think there’s a bulletproof way to deal with this, but it would be interesting if someone could go through a sample of ‘starting my PE journey’ threads and see how many of the users ended up gaining. Of course, some of them may just stop posting because they gave up, even if they did saw (or would see) gains. Still, the number of gainers who gained more than 0.5” (which I think can easily be measurement error/variance) would probably provide a ‘floor’ for how effective PE can be.

Another key thing to keep in mind is how survivorship bias could affect potential over-training and injuries. Having a really injury-proof dick is going to allow you to train super hard. Training super hard is (probably) going to allow you to gain more. Therefore, it might be the case that guys here who are known to have been big gainers are also blessed with more injury-proof dicks. Combine this inference with the one from the previous paragraph, and you have a situation where the people who are posting a lot (since they’ve gained a lot and are more motivated to post) are also those who just happen to have dicks that can withstand the rigor of super intense routines. Again, don’t know how exactly to combat this, but it’s probably something we should be aware of. People who write about getting injured or suffering EQ issues after following the routines of some of the ‘rock-stars’ of this site are probably just the tip of the iceberg and should be carefully listened to.

-JoeBrad

P.S. Just to be clear, I am not denigrating any of the intense routines on this site. They almost always come with caveats that they are not beginner friendly, and those routines for sure work for some percentage of men. I’m just saying that we can’t only judge that percentage from comparing the positive to negative ratio of posts on that thread.

PE will be unsuccessful for most people because it requires putting in work. It will be unsuccessful for some people because it requires using proper technique/procedures. If you use proper technique and keep putting in the work gains will happen.

To me this post is almost pointing out the obvious. Thank you very much! I finally see some reason on this site. That is of course not to say that some form of PE doesn’t work. It just highlights that the collective perception of PE and the success of it is highly warped on this site. I actually think that this is the main reason why PE has been avoided by the scientific community so much.

I would really love to do a study on the forum members here at some point to investigate this. I imagine survivorship bias is one of the key factors at play. Just like with pick up "artistry" or the growing obsession with supplements or any other bro science subject.

Most people aren’t willing to put in the effort to become proficient with anything. You could say the people out there who can play guitar show a survivorship bias as well. It’s kind of meaningless to say that those people who didn’t really try are not succeeding. It’s only the people who are willing to commit to a fair amount of drudgery who will see any kind of result. How that plays out is probably reasonably captured in the 20 years of data on this site. It could best be described as modest gains.

Most people are blobs because the don’t exercise and eat crap.
Most people can’t play golf to a professional level
Most people won’t gain from PE because they won’t put in the effort.

Interesting. Can’t say I disagree with any of this. The part about injury-proof dick rings true because I’m always saying to stretch as hard as humanly possible, adding the caveat that it’s a personal thing.

Other than this being an astute observation, how does this help us?

You have been a member here for a month.

I don’t see how that’s relevant.
But I agree my statement might have been a bit strongly worded. I can see how it could be perceived as an offense.

I think that, while most men would probably say "yes, I’d like a bigger tool", the majority of them doesn’t really want it enough to justify setting a proper PE routine over a long enough period to see results.

It’s just the same happening for fitness: perhaps 95% of men (and women) would love to be in a better physical shape. Why we don’t see people running in flocks to the gym? Because most of them doesn’t want it enough to put in the effort.

The key element is consistency: if you REALLY want something, you’ll keep going after those first weeks with no visible results. Then over time you’ll start getting what you wanted.

All I will say is that the new guys I originally started TP with have all left.

The usual path seemed to be:
Broke up with GF.
Get to the gym.
Get a bigger dick. (join TP)
oh wait … got a new girl. nevermind.
never be seen again

I totally agree with you, but there is another factor:

The truth is that penis size isn’t really all that important in the grand scheme of things. It is not all that important for satisfying the vast majority of women even.

When you really grok that, it’s becomes a lot harder to justify the frankly ridiculous time and effort necessary to get any appreciable gains. Especially when you could be using that time to do things more important and practical.

Totally agree. The amount of time that people put into PE very often exceeds that of typical workouts at the gym or at some sport, often beyond what is conventionally considered a reasonable investment of time.
It’s crazy to think about the fact that some people start their work with 1h of pumping then wear some stretch device for 8h during work, do another hour of pumping at home and put on a cockring before bed. And then complain about blisters or numb feeling in their dick.

This really gives the impression that compared to other types of exercise PE seems to have a particularly small effect size. That’s why I think a study on this could be useful. To estimate the true effect size of PE given the invested time, tenacity, biological factors, such as resilience towards damage from PE, and psychological factors such as dysmorphia and fetishistic fixation with penis size.

I think the results could help making PE more effective and more accessible to a broader audience, removing stigma and adding some scientific credence.

Turning to the data someone posted above. I consider the data on this site at best a neat starting point but not really of any scientific value as the data is highly biased.
To improve the data and also address the topic of this thread - survivorship bias - I encourage everyone to always upload their data, and always measure in a standardised fashion and to provide as many stats as possible. It would also be useful if we knew the desired target size, and had some physiological and psychological data - maybe rating scales of EQ and satisfaction.
Even better would be an app that sends reminders and that logs the exercises done that day.

Reasonable compared to what?

Depending on whose numbers you believe, the average American spends 2-1/2 hours a day watching TV, and about the same on "social media." (though I suspect much of that is concurrent) While many people seem to view that as important and necessary, I view it as a complete waste of time.

You can watch TV or surf r/cat-pictures while doing PE if you want, so your net "investment" would be zero.

Great post. I’m also worried to share too much about PE sometimes because I don’t want someone else to get injured.

There just seems to be a lot of idiots out there. We can’t help you all and I have to share what has worked for me and the amazing people that have given us so many tips out there. You have to warm up, take it slow, listen to your body. No matter how many times the vets tell us to be patient, here comes a newbie that wants it all in a month. I few times hear about people that did it the right way and still say it didn’t work for them (we do need that data).

What I do find funny is that many blogs say PE might* work but it is a lot of work and you may get injured and you only gain .5 or 1 inch on average. My .5 gain has been a game changer for me and my wife ! So, I would like to see more about minimal gains and real happy PE members out there.

To be honest I did PE in 2010-2012 and never did a blog post so even I would blame myself for not sharing my story before about minimal gain and being very happy.

Sometimes I think it’s probably a great thing that PE gives so little results.

Otherwise we’d live in a society where so many men compete in who grows the longest dick and women should all get used to unbearable pain to have sex.

+1 Solvay1927