Is Sunk Cost Fallacy a Fallacy?

gwern

I just finished the first draft of my essay, "Are Sunk Costs Fallacies?"; there is still material I need to go through, but the bulk of the material is now there. The formatting is too gnarly to post here, so I ask everyone's forgiveness in clicking through.

To summarize:

sunk costs are probably issues in big organizations
- but maybe not ones that can be helped
sunk costs are not issues in animals
they appear to be in children & adults
- but many apparent problems can be explained as part of a learning strategy
there are few clear indications sunk costs are genuine problems
much of what we call 'sunk cost' looks like simple carelessness & thoughtlessness

(If any of that seems unlikely or absurd to you, click through. I've worked very hard to provide multiple citations where possible, and fulltext for practically everything.)

I started this a while ago; but Luke/SIAI paid for much of the work, and that motivation plus academic library access made this essay more comprehensive than it would have been and finished months in advance.

To summarize:

sunk costs are probably issues in big organizations
- but maybe not ones that can be helped
sunk costs are not issues in animals
they appear to be in children & adults
- but many apparent problems can be explained as part of a learning strategy
there are few clear indications sunk costs are genuine problems
much of what we call 'sunk cost' looks like simple carelessness & thoughtlessness

(If any of that seems unlikely or absurd to you, click through. I've worked very hard to provide multiple citations where possible, and fulltext for practically everything.)

FYI it isn't even clear the review he mentions says what he thinks it says, not to mention the reviewers noted most of the studies had high risk of bias. "Other therapies" as controls in the studies doesn't necessarily mean therapies that are considered to be effective.

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Is Sunk Cost Fallacy a Fallacy?

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Is Sunk Cost Fallacy a Fallacy?

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