The Broker
Running the con
Households Receiving Letters
128
/ 128
A con artist's internal monologue as he manipulates 128 households.
The Baltimore Stockbroker is a classic thought experiment illustrating survivorship bias—the logical error of focusing on winners while ignoring the losers who are no longer visible.
The broker has no skill. By sending opposite predictions to different groups, half will always be "right." After 7 rounds, someone is guaranteed to have received 7 correct predictions.
128 → 64 → 32 → 16 → 8 → 4 → 2 → 1
Each round, half are eliminated. The final recipient sees a 1-in-128 "miracle"—but it was inevitable from the start.
• Mutual fund advertising (only survivors shown)
• Startup success stories (ignoring the 90% that fail)
• "I smoke and I'm fine" (the dead can't argue)