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Mario comments on Open Thread: December 2009 - Less Wrong
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I'm looking for a particular fallacy or bias that I can't find on any list.
Specifically, this is when people say "one more can't hurt;" like a person throwing an extra piece of garbage on an already littered sidewalk, a gambler who has lost nearly everything deciding to bet away the rest, a person in bad health continuing the behavior that caused the problem, etc. I can think of dozens of examples, but I can't find a name. I would expect it to be called the "Lost Cause Fallacy" or the "Fallacy of Futility" or something, but neither seems to be recognized anywhere. Does this have a standard name that I don't know, or is it so obvious that no one ever bothered to name it?
Your first example sounds related to the broken window theory, but I've never seen a name for the underlying bias. (The broken window fallacy is something else altogether.)
Bee-sting theory of poverty is the closest I've heard. You're right, this is real and deserves a name, but I don't know what it would be.
This seems like a special case of the more general "just one can't hurt" (whatever the current level) way of thinking. I don't know any name for this but I guess you could call it something like the "non-Archimedean bias"?
"Sunk cost fallacy"
No, that's different. That's pursuing a reward so as to not acknowledge a loss. This is ignoring a penalty because of previous losses.
Informally, "throwing good money after bad"? I agree that this is a real and interesting phenomenon.
It seems like a type of apathy.