gwern comments on Is Sunk Cost Fallacy a Fallacy? - Less Wrong

19 Post author: gwern 04 February 2012 04:33AM

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Comment author: gwern 02 November 2014 02:55:20PM *  2 points [-]

That's like asking "If homeopathy worked and all the doctors were wrong, would they admit it?"

No; it's like asking "If homeopathy didn't work and all the homeopaths were wrong, would they admit it?" You can find plenty of critics of Big Science and/or government spending on prestige projects, just like you can find plenty of critics of homeopathy.

If funding the Apollo Project was a complete waste of money compared to the normal grant process, the world would be a different place, because that would require levels of incompetency on NASA's part so great that it would get noticed.

If homeopathy was a complete waste of money compared to normal medicine implying 'great' levels of incompetency on homeopaths, how would the world look different than it does?

Comment author: Jiro 02 November 2014 05:00:00PM *  0 points [-]

You can find plenty of critics of Big Science and/or government spending on prestige projects,

Those people generally claim that Apollo was a waste of money period, not that Apollo was a waste of money compared to going to the moon via the normal grant process.