"They built old houses to last." Did they?

Question

Walking through a historic district, someone remarks that buildings from two centuries ago were clearly built better than today's, since the old ones are so solid and beautiful and are still standing.

Explain why the surviving old buildings are misleading evidence about how well people built in the past.

Accepted Answer

Only the sturdy old buildings are left to see. Two hundred years ago, people put up a huge range of structures, some excellent, many flimsy. Over the centuries the poorly built ones collapsed, burned, rotted, or were torn down and replaced. What remains today is the small, hardy fraction that happened to last. Admiring those and concluding that "they built everything better back then" is survivorship bias: you are judging an entire era by its survivors. The missing comparison. To fairly compare old and new construction, you would need to know the quality of everything built then, including al…

"They built old houses to last." Did they?

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