8 ms·

The sunk cost fallacy

viburnum 8y ago
Where was the trick?
- electrichead 8y ago
  At the end of the article
codr4 8y ago
I've tried to explain this to one of my (former) employers, he just couldn't wrap his head around it. Of course it matters, I paid a fortune for whatever. Yeah, right. It's really about being here and now, and may be applied to anything in life.
prestigious 8y ago
Sometimes it can be hard to tell it is a sunk cost that’s the problem
- gbacon 8y ago
  Sunk cost refers to whatever resources have already been spent. Where it becomes a fallacy is thinking along the lines of But I’ve already invested this much money or You know, I’ve been working on it for all these years, so I CAN’T quit now. What we’ve paid into it is gone — a sunk cost — and what matters is how much additional investment from where we stand now will be required to complete the goal and whether that cost will be worth it when considered against other opportunities for the same time, money, and attention. In some sense, we start at even every day.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
- contravariant 8y ago
  The cost has always sunk. The fallacy is assigning it value. In the broadest sense the fallacy is about not wanting to waste past effort. Whereas in reality 'wasting' past effort doesn't cost anything but wasting future effort does. Now it can be hard to tell to what extent your past effort actually brought your goal closer, so it can be hard to judge if continuing effort may or may not be worth it, but if you're arguing it is worth continuing because you don't want to waste past effort, and not because the goal is worth the remaining effort required, then the reasoning is fallacious.
maxxxxx 8y ago
there is a pretty fine line between persistence and falling into this trap. In hindsight it's clear but while you are in the situation it's hard to tell if you should call it quits or not.
dwaltrip 8y ago
An interesting twist: sometimes it may be worth finishing purely for the psychological boost of confidence, or other similar meta, 2nd order effects. I don't have a good algorithm for knowing when this is the case, but especially for smaller individual-level projects, I think it is probably not that uncommon. It also seems highly context dependent -- e.g. if one hasn't had a win in a while, it should be a larger consideration. Framed another way: first learn how to finish projects, then learn how to finish the right project. And of course, there is the problem that all outcomes and evaluations of worthiness have at least some uncertainty, if not significant amounts. The sunk-cost fallacy is a useful tool, but it isn't always easy to apply in practice.
- daveFNbuck 8y ago
  Those effects are compatible with a proper understanding of the sunk cost fallacy. The 2nd order effects are future benefits that can make the project worth completing. The point is that it's the magnitude of the benefits you expect to get that matters and not the amount of resources you've already spent.
  - dwaltrip 8y ago
    Totally. But I think 2nd order effects are often underappreciated, and the difficulty of evaluating them does take some of the "oomph" out of the sunk cost fallacy.
twtw 8y ago
I first read about this when I was a teenager, and frequently think about it when making decisions, but have never once found that being aware of it has been helpful. In the face of uncertainty, you never know what is going to happen. I have never experienced a situation where I have poured money into something and it became "obvious" (for a rational agent) that i could do just as well by abandoning that previous effort. I would be very interested in hearing other's experiences.
- gumby 8y ago
  Very useful in business. It's tempting to agree with, "Hey, that $60M got us almost all the way there; for only 6M more we can finish!" But the real question is "Shall we spend $6M for a product that we think will generate $3M/year in years 3-5 after launch?" Or if you prefer, "We've spent two years building the test infrastructure for our legacy product, and are within a quarter of finishing. Looking forward, will we generate enough support revenue to justify investing 10 people for a quarter (plus documentation)? Or have most of our customers migrated by now?"
  - Dylan16807 8y ago
    > Very useful in business. It's tempting to agree with, "Hey, that $60M got us almost all the way there; for only 6M more we can finish!" But the real question is "Shall we spend $6M for a product that we think will generate $3M/year in years 3-5 after launch?" That's such a lopsided question it's hard to try to connect it to reality, though. If the expected profit is $9M then how did you manage to spend $60M in the first place? Something huge happened that changed the picture, and makes it hard to relate as a simple "sunk cost" example.
    - gumby 8y ago
      That’s precisely the point. You might have launched that project two years ago thinking it wouldn’t take too long and would be a nice little earner for your (then) last generation product. Well instead of six months it took two years and now that legacy product is two generations old and most customers have migrated...but it’s finally almost done and you do still have some customers using it, and gosh, look we’ve already spent $60M; what a shame to throw it all away when for only a little more.... people make decisions this way all the time. These decisions also consume labor. Despite all the work put in, is it really worth finishing that refactoring or should you just abandon it all?
UncleEntity 8y ago
Thanks, Beeb, now I'm depressed -- turns out my whole reason for existence is based on a fallacy...
- dirkgently 8y ago
  But it wasn't _your_ fallacy.
krob 8y ago
My personal experience is that you can only determine whether or not project should be continually pursued is in hindsight. Knowing ahead of time, this decision is mostly based on dogged persistence and sometimes a little insanity.
codingdave 8y ago
"It is never too late to give up." I know it sounds like a de-motivational poster, but it nicely summarizes this entire concept.
badrabbit 8y ago
The F35 jet plane. Enough said.
- seppin 8y ago
  It's not a failure if it's purpose is to cost a lot of money.
  - badrabbit 8y ago
    Not a lot,trillions!! The cost is comparable(if not exceeding) the interstate highway project.
- danieltillett 8y ago
  Only if you miss what the purpose of the F35 is. If you are silly enough to think that it is about creating an aircraft then it looks monumentally stupid. If you see it for what it really is (a massive heist of the tax payers) then it is a work of genius.
  - badrabbit 8y ago
    Even then,it's not like it's some massive conspiracy. There are lawmakers and pentagon officials that would habe stopped it were it not for sunken cost fallacy. Unless of course you actually believe every single person in washington has sold out his country for money.
    - danieltillett 8y ago
      A lot of people have tried to stop the F35 project so far without any success. Just because a program is continuing does not mean it has not faced opposition.
dredmorbius 8y ago
See also; the sunk-cost-fallacy fallacy. Naaive accounting based only on financial costs, excluding switching costs, other complementary investments, psychological costs, unbooked benefits, etc., may justify at least dome behaviours typically branded as SCF. https://xebia.com/blog/sunk-cost-fallacy-fallacy/ https://xebia.com/blog/sunk-cost-fallacy-fallacy/ https://modleft.blogspot.com/2005/09/sunk-cost-fallacy-fallacy.html https://modleft.blogspot.com/2005/09/sunk-cost-fallacy-falla... https://econundead.com/2015/09/20/the-sunk-cost-fallacy-fallacy/ https://econundead.com/2015/09/20/the-sunk-cost-fallacy-fall... http://www.gwern.net/Sunk-cost http://www.gwern.net/Sunk-cost
- BeetleB 8y ago
  I looked at the first link, and it has little to do with the sunk cost fallacy. If you're not factoring in the cost to switch, you are simply making poor estimates for your costs. I have a business now that I've sunk $100K into. I have an option to abandon it and move across the country for a salaried job. I need to estimate whether I'll have more money with the job vs my business 5 years from now. If I estimate it wrong by not taking into account the cost to move, or the COL of the new city, it has nothing to do with the sunk cost fallacy. For the 2nd link, I've never heard an argument using sunk cost that would say one should buy the jumper. This seems like a strawman.
  - dredmorbius 8y ago
    I'll admit that this was a quick grab at some references. I've seen several better, though Gwern's essay is pretty good. I don't have the others readily at hand. The failure to account for switching or information costs is fairly common among misuses of SCF, and looking as to why that is may be fruitful. SCF is not completely wrong, but analyses claiming it are very frequently incomplete.
everdev 8y ago
> Ever gone to the cinema and stayed to the end of a film you actually loathed 10 minutes in? I think the author is assuming that what preceded will therefore follow. Hate the first 10min? The rest of the movie will be bad. Lose $100 gambling? You'll keep losing. I think people evaluate more based on percentages and alternatives. What's else an I going to do if I leave the movie early? What are the odds of me enjoying that activity versus the chance the movie night turn around or the value I'll get from being able to knowledgeably talk about the film with friends. Or, did I lose the money gambling from making bad bets or is it just the natural up and down? For example, if you sell a stock every time it goes down in value, you'll be pretty broke. I think people choose to carry on with diminishing or unlikely returns if the likelihood and magnitude of the turnaround is sufficiently more attractive than stopping. That reasoning makes perfect sense as long as you're evaluating your options accurately. I was always taught not to consider sunk costs in your decisions, just know where you stand in the present and think about what you want in the future. What happened in the past can't be undone.
- Jtsummers 8y ago
  The author understands the fallacy just fine. As do you. The flaw is your assumption in paragraph 5. People give the sunk costs greater weight than you, and so you seem to be assuming this fallacy doesn’t really exist. They stick with a bad movie because they spent the ticket money. Not because they expect the actors to have received lessons and coaching that makes act 3 an Oscar contender. Dinner with their friends would be a better return (for the evening) but they get caught up in that $10 they spent and the “loss” of that if they walk out.
  - sverige 8y ago
    >Not because they expect the actors to have received lessons and coaching that makes act 3 an Oscar contender. This is the actor fallacy. Sure, there are good and bad actors, but what makes a movie (or play) worthwhile is the script, then the director, then other stuff like cinematography, set decoration, lighting, etc. Actors are actually the most replaceable and least important part of the equation. Counterintuitive, I know, especially in light of the publicity machines that are at work 24/7. And for goodness' sake, don't mention this to the actors. So if the plot premise sucks in the first 10 minutes, you might as well bail out then. It ain't gonna get better.
he0001 8y ago
Not sure that there’s such thing. I mean if you’re not persistent enough you won’t know if there’s a value to it. And if you are persistent enough you won’t know what the alternative would have been and if that would have been better than you are right now.
madeuptempacct 8y ago
There is a (long) argument here (http://www.gwern.net/Sunk-cost http://www.gwern.net/Sunk-cost) that people tend to over-use the concept, since it's probably the most know logical fallacy.
okket 8y ago
Amazing, the article does not mention the most obvious sunk cost fallacy of our current time: Brexit
radford-neal 8y ago
The article never clearly states what they consider the fallacy to be. So it's maybe not surprising that they seem to actually not understand it. They say: QUOTE: After you’ve invested £10 million ($13m) in a project, which hasn’t delivered, the case for throwing in a further £5 million is far easier to justify if you only consider returns on £5 million – rather than £15 million. But in reality, of course, you also don’t want to look stupid by abandoning it. But it is CORRECT to consider only the 5 million additional investment when deciding whether to continue the project. Of course, it's not correct (from the organization's point of view) to consider whether you (the employee) will look stupid if it's abandoned. That would be some sort of fallacy. But what is usually in my experience called the "sunk cost fallacy" is the opposite - insisting that to justify continuing the project, it's necessary for it to pay back the whole 15 million, even though 10 million of that is a sunk cost.
- daveFNbuck 8y ago
  I think they're saying it's correct to only consider the 5 million, then pointed out that you're also biased in that way for other reasons.
CM30 8y ago
I have to be honest, I think entertainment may be one of those things where to some degree the sunk cost fallacy may not be 100% accurate. I mean yes, I see the reasoning behind this: > We all do it. Ever gone to the cinema and stayed to the end of a film you actually loathed 10 minutes in – or watched yet another season of what was once your favourite TV show? But TV shows, films, books, games... they've all got many examples of works which either start out terrible and get much better as they go along or start out fantastic and fall to pieces later down the line. Someone who takes this fallacy seriously all the time wouldn't read/watch Lord of the Rings long enough for the party to leave the shire. They probably wouldn't reach the first dungeon in The Legend of Zelda Twilight Princess (which is sometime after about 2 hours of tutorial content and meandering intros). Hell, TV Tropes has a whole list of works where you have to sit through hours of boring filler before getting to the interesting stuff: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SlowPacedBeginning https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SlowPacedBeginni... There's also the related idea of a show/work 'growing the beard', where it really picks up later on as the writers/actors/directors/whoever finally get into their stride. So it's not necessarily a fallacy to sit through a tedious or even bad work under the assumption it'll get better, because in quite a few cases, that's exactly what does happen.
- dirkgently 8y ago
  > But TV shows, films, books, games... they've all got many examples of works which either start out terrible and get much better But for one good example, how many bad examples are there? You are willing to sink your cost by betting on, say, 10% chances that a dud movie is going to turn out to be better.
mcguire 8y ago
I'm always wondering if this is actually a fallacy. You buy theater tickets. I say, "give them to me." If you don't, is it because you want to see the play, or the sunk cost fallacy? Does the fact that it is icy out and dangerous make a difference?
- daveFNbuck 8y ago
  The key to the theater tickets example is that you should treat tickets you've bought the same as if you got them for free. Replay the scenario but instead of buying the tickets everyone at my office got free movie vouchers. If I'd give you the free voucher but not the ticket I bought, that's indicative of the sunk cost fallacy. Better examples usually make the alternative better than the thing you already paid for. Giving you my tickets isn't much of a benefit to me, but icy roads can make a difference. If conditions are too dangerous to drive to a free movie showing, I shouldn't drive to use the tickets I already paid for either.
KaoruAoiShiho 8y ago
Does google have the opposite of a sunk cost fallacy?
megaremote 8y ago
It isn't the same to keep walking to the shop that you know is closed and will got no benefit out of it, than to keep spending on high speed rail or an IT project where you will end up with a benefit.

Where was the trick?

electrichead 8y ago
At the end of the article

I've tried to explain this to one of my (former) employers, he just couldn't wrap his head around it. Of course it matters, I paid a fortune for whatever. Yeah, right. It's really about being here and now, and may be applied to anything in life.

prestigious 8y ago

Sometimes it can be hard to tell it is a sunk cost that’s the problem

gbacon 8y ago
Sunk cost refers to whatever resources have already been spent. Where it becomes a fallacy is thinking along the lines of But I’ve already invested this much money or You know, I’ve been working on it for all these years, so I CAN’T quit now. What we’ve paid into it is gone — a sunk cost — and what matters is how much additional investment from where we stand now will be required to complete the goal and whether that cost will be worth it when considered against other opportunities for the same time, money, and attention. In some sense, we start at even every day.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
contravariant 8y ago
The cost has always sunk. The fallacy is assigning it value. In the broadest sense the fallacy is about not wanting to waste past effort. Whereas in reality 'wasting' past effort doesn't cost anything but wasting future effort does. Now it can be hard to tell to what extent your past effort actually brought your goal closer, so it can be hard to judge if continuing effort may or may not be worth it, but if you're arguing it is worth continuing because you don't want to waste past effort, and not because the goal is worth the remaining effort required, then the reasoning is fallacious.

maxxxxx 8y ago

there is a pretty fine line between persistence and falling into this trap. In hindsight it's clear but while you are in the situation it's hard to tell if you should call it quits or not.

dwaltrip 8y ago

An interesting twist: sometimes it may be worth finishing purely for the psychological boost of confidence, or other similar meta, 2nd order effects. I don't have a good algorithm for knowing when this is the case, but especially for smaller individual-level projects, I think it is probably not that uncommon. It also seems highly context dependent -- e.g. if one hasn't had a win in a while, it should be a larger consideration. Framed another way: first learn how to finish projects, then learn how to finish the right project. And of course, there is the problem that all outcomes and evaluations of worthiness have at least some uncertainty, if not significant amounts. The sunk-cost fallacy is a useful tool, but it isn't always easy to apply in practice.

daveFNbuck 8y ago
Those effects are compatible with a proper understanding of the sunk cost fallacy. The 2nd order effects are future benefits that can make the project worth completing. The point is that it's the magnitude of the benefits you expect to get that matters and not the amount of resources you've already spent.
- dwaltrip 8y ago
  Totally. But I think 2nd order effects are often underappreciated, and the difficulty of evaluating them does take some of the "oomph" out of the sunk cost fallacy.

twtw 8y ago

I first read about this when I was a teenager, and frequently think about it when making decisions, but have never once found that being aware of it has been helpful. In the face of uncertainty, you never know what is going to happen. I have never experienced a situation where I have poured money into something and it became "obvious" (for a rational agent) that i could do just as well by abandoning that previous effort. I would be very interested in hearing other's experiences.

gumby 8y ago
Very useful in business. It's tempting to agree with, "Hey, that $60M got us almost all the way there; for only 6M more we can finish!" But the real question is "Shall we spend $6M for a product that we think will generate $3M/year in years 3-5 after launch?" Or if you prefer, "We've spent two years building the test infrastructure for our legacy product, and are within a quarter of finishing. Looking forward, will we generate enough support revenue to justify investing 10 people for a quarter (plus documentation)? Or have most of our customers migrated by now?"
- Dylan16807 8y ago
  > Very useful in business. It's tempting to agree with, "Hey, that $60M got us almost all the way there; for only 6M more we can finish!" But the real question is "Shall we spend $6M for a product that we think will generate $3M/year in years 3-5 after launch?" That's such a lopsided question it's hard to try to connect it to reality, though. If the expected profit is $9M then how did you manage to spend $60M in the first place? Something huge happened that changed the picture, and makes it hard to relate as a simple "sunk cost" example.
  - gumby 8y ago
    That’s precisely the point. You might have launched that project two years ago thinking it wouldn’t take too long and would be a nice little earner for your (then) last generation product. Well instead of six months it took two years and now that legacy product is two generations old and most customers have migrated...but it’s finally almost done and you do still have some customers using it, and gosh, look we’ve already spent $60M; what a shame to throw it all away when for only a little more.... people make decisions this way all the time. These decisions also consume labor. Despite all the work put in, is it really worth finishing that refactoring or should you just abandon it all?

UncleEntity 8y ago

Thanks, Beeb, now I'm depressed -- turns out my whole reason for existence is based on a fallacy...

dirkgently 8y ago
But it wasn't _your_ fallacy.

krob 8y ago

My personal experience is that you can only determine whether or not project should be continually pursued is in hindsight. Knowing ahead of time, this decision is mostly based on dogged persistence and sometimes a little insanity.

codingdave 8y ago

"It is never too late to give up." I know it sounds like a de-motivational poster, but it nicely summarizes this entire concept.

badrabbit 8y ago

The F35 jet plane. Enough said.

seppin 8y ago
It's not a failure if it's purpose is to cost a lot of money.
- badrabbit 8y ago
  Not a lot,trillions!! The cost is comparable(if not exceeding) the interstate highway project.
danieltillett 8y ago
Only if you miss what the purpose of the F35 is. If you are silly enough to think that it is about creating an aircraft then it looks monumentally stupid. If you see it for what it really is (a massive heist of the tax payers) then it is a work of genius.
- badrabbit 8y ago
  Even then,it's not like it's some massive conspiracy. There are lawmakers and pentagon officials that would habe stopped it were it not for sunken cost fallacy. Unless of course you actually believe every single person in washington has sold out his country for money.
  - danieltillett 8y ago
    A lot of people have tried to stop the F35 project so far without any success. Just because a program is continuing does not mean it has not faced opposition.

dredmorbius 8y ago

See also; the sunk-cost-fallacy fallacy. Naaive accounting based only on financial costs, excluding switching costs, other complementary investments, psychological costs, unbooked benefits, etc., may justify at least dome behaviours typically branded as SCF. https://xebia.com/blog/sunk-cost-fallacy-fallacy/ https://xebia.com/blog/sunk-cost-fallacy-fallacy/ https://modleft.blogspot.com/2005/09/sunk-cost-fallacy-fallacy.html https://modleft.blogspot.com/2005/09/sunk-cost-fallacy-falla... https://econundead.com/2015/09/20/the-sunk-cost-fallacy-fallacy/ https://econundead.com/2015/09/20/the-sunk-cost-fallacy-fall... http://www.gwern.net/Sunk-cost http://www.gwern.net/Sunk-cost

BeetleB 8y ago
I looked at the first link, and it has little to do with the sunk cost fallacy. If you're not factoring in the cost to switch, you are simply making poor estimates for your costs. I have a business now that I've sunk $100K into. I have an option to abandon it and move across the country for a salaried job. I need to estimate whether I'll have more money with the job vs my business 5 years from now. If I estimate it wrong by not taking into account the cost to move, or the COL of the new city, it has nothing to do with the sunk cost fallacy. For the 2nd link, I've never heard an argument using sunk cost that would say one should buy the jumper. This seems like a strawman.
- dredmorbius 8y ago
  I'll admit that this was a quick grab at some references. I've seen several better, though Gwern's essay is pretty good. I don't have the others readily at hand. The failure to account for switching or information costs is fairly common among misuses of SCF, and looking as to why that is may be fruitful. SCF is not completely wrong, but analyses claiming it are very frequently incomplete.

everdev 8y ago

> Ever gone to the cinema and stayed to the end of a film you actually loathed 10 minutes in? I think the author is assuming that what preceded will therefore follow. Hate the first 10min? The rest of the movie will be bad. Lose $100 gambling? You'll keep losing. I think people evaluate more based on percentages and alternatives. What's else an I going to do if I leave the movie early? What are the odds of me enjoying that activity versus the chance the movie night turn around or the value I'll get from being able to knowledgeably talk about the film with friends. Or, did I lose the money gambling from making bad bets or is it just the natural up and down? For example, if you sell a stock every time it goes down in value, you'll be pretty broke. I think people choose to carry on with diminishing or unlikely returns if the likelihood and magnitude of the turnaround is sufficiently more attractive than stopping. That reasoning makes perfect sense as long as you're evaluating your options accurately. I was always taught not to consider sunk costs in your decisions, just know where you stand in the present and think about what you want in the future. What happened in the past can't be undone.

Jtsummers 8y ago
The author understands the fallacy just fine. As do you. The flaw is your assumption in paragraph 5. People give the sunk costs greater weight than you, and so you seem to be assuming this fallacy doesn’t really exist. They stick with a bad movie because they spent the ticket money. Not because they expect the actors to have received lessons and coaching that makes act 3 an Oscar contender. Dinner with their friends would be a better return (for the evening) but they get caught up in that $10 they spent and the “loss” of that if they walk out.
- sverige 8y ago
  >Not because they expect the actors to have received lessons and coaching that makes act 3 an Oscar contender. This is the actor fallacy. Sure, there are good and bad actors, but what makes a movie (or play) worthwhile is the script, then the director, then other stuff like cinematography, set decoration, lighting, etc. Actors are actually the most replaceable and least important part of the equation. Counterintuitive, I know, especially in light of the publicity machines that are at work 24/7. And for goodness' sake, don't mention this to the actors. So if the plot premise sucks in the first 10 minutes, you might as well bail out then. It ain't gonna get better.

he0001 8y ago

Not sure that there’s such thing. I mean if you’re not persistent enough you won’t know if there’s a value to it. And if you are persistent enough you won’t know what the alternative would have been and if that would have been better than you are right now.

madeuptempacct 8y ago

There is a (long) argument here (http://www.gwern.net/Sunk-cost http://www.gwern.net/Sunk-cost) that people tend to over-use the concept, since it's probably the most know logical fallacy.

okket 8y ago

Amazing, the article does not mention the most obvious sunk cost fallacy of our current time: Brexit

radford-neal 8y ago

The article never clearly states what they consider the fallacy to be. So it's maybe not surprising that they seem to actually not understand it. They say: QUOTE: After you’ve invested £10 million ($13m) in a project, which hasn’t delivered, the case for throwing in a further £5 million is far easier to justify if you only consider returns on £5 million – rather than £15 million. But in reality, of course, you also don’t want to look stupid by abandoning it. But it is CORRECT to consider only the 5 million additional investment when deciding whether to continue the project. Of course, it's not correct (from the organization's point of view) to consider whether you (the employee) will look stupid if it's abandoned. That would be some sort of fallacy. But what is usually in my experience called the "sunk cost fallacy" is the opposite - insisting that to justify continuing the project, it's necessary for it to pay back the whole 15 million, even though 10 million of that is a sunk cost.

daveFNbuck 8y ago
I think they're saying it's correct to only consider the 5 million, then pointed out that you're also biased in that way for other reasons.

CM30 8y ago

I have to be honest, I think entertainment may be one of those things where to some degree the sunk cost fallacy may not be 100% accurate. I mean yes, I see the reasoning behind this: > We all do it. Ever gone to the cinema and stayed to the end of a film you actually loathed 10 minutes in – or watched yet another season of what was once your favourite TV show? But TV shows, films, books, games... they've all got many examples of works which either start out terrible and get much better as they go along or start out fantastic and fall to pieces later down the line. Someone who takes this fallacy seriously all the time wouldn't read/watch Lord of the Rings long enough for the party to leave the shire. They probably wouldn't reach the first dungeon in The Legend of Zelda Twilight Princess (which is sometime after about 2 hours of tutorial content and meandering intros). Hell, TV Tropes has a whole list of works where you have to sit through hours of boring filler before getting to the interesting stuff: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SlowPacedBeginning https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SlowPacedBeginni... There's also the related idea of a show/work 'growing the beard', where it really picks up later on as the writers/actors/directors/whoever finally get into their stride. So it's not necessarily a fallacy to sit through a tedious or even bad work under the assumption it'll get better, because in quite a few cases, that's exactly what does happen.

dirkgently 8y ago
> But TV shows, films, books, games... they've all got many examples of works which either start out terrible and get much better But for one good example, how many bad examples are there? You are willing to sink your cost by betting on, say, 10% chances that a dud movie is going to turn out to be better.

mcguire 8y ago

I'm always wondering if this is actually a fallacy. You buy theater tickets. I say, "give them to me." If you don't, is it because you want to see the play, or the sunk cost fallacy? Does the fact that it is icy out and dangerous make a difference?

daveFNbuck 8y ago
The key to the theater tickets example is that you should treat tickets you've bought the same as if you got them for free. Replay the scenario but instead of buying the tickets everyone at my office got free movie vouchers. If I'd give you the free voucher but not the ticket I bought, that's indicative of the sunk cost fallacy. Better examples usually make the alternative better than the thing you already paid for. Giving you my tickets isn't much of a benefit to me, but icy roads can make a difference. If conditions are too dangerous to drive to a free movie showing, I shouldn't drive to use the tickets I already paid for either.

KaoruAoiShiho 8y ago

Does google have the opposite of a sunk cost fallacy?

megaremote 8y ago

It isn't the same to keep walking to the shop that you know is closed and will got no benefit out of it, than to keep spending on high speed rail or an IT project where you will end up with a benefit.