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.)

If your essay is about "Is the sunk cost fallacy a problem in humans?" then the answer is not so trivial.

And if it isn't, as I conclude (after an introduction discussing the difference between being valid in a simplified artificial model and the real world!), then it's perfectly legitimate to ask whether accusations of sunk cost fallacy - which are endemic and received wisdom - are themselves fallacious. Sheesh. I feel as if I were discussing someone's credibility and someone said 'but that's an ad hominem!'. Yes. Yes, it is.

(Notice your Wikipedia link is full of hypotheticals and description, and not real world evidence.)

It is not clever or deep to title things as though you are overturning a basic principle when you are not.

People do not discuss sunk cost because it is a theorem in some mathematical model or a theoretical way possible agents might fail to maximize utility; they discuss it because they think it is real and serious. If I conclude that it isn't serious, then in what sense am I not trying to overturn a basic principle?

Finally, your criticism of the title or what overreaching you perceive in it aside, did you have any actual criticism like missing refs or anything?

(Notice your Wikipedia link is full of hypotheticals and description, and not real world evidence.)

Precisely. The wikipedia article set out to explain what the Sunk Cost Fallacy is and did it. It did not set out to answer any of the dozens of questions which would make sense as titles to your post (such as "Is the sunk cost fallacy a problem in humans?") and so real world 'evidence' wouldn't make much sense. Just like filling up the article on No True Scottsman with evidence about whether True Scottsman actually do like haggis would be rather ... (read more)

9Sniffnoy14y

But none of this changes the fact that the title is still misleading. Even if accusations of sunk cost fallacy are themselves often fallacious, this doesn't change the fact that you are arguing that the sunk cost fallacy is a mode of reasoning which doesn't often occur, rather than one that is actually valid. Claiming that it is not serious may indeed be overturning a basic principle, but it is not the basic principle the title claims you may be overturning. Sensationalize if you like, but there's no need to be unclear.

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Is Sunk Cost Fallacy a Fallacy?

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Is Sunk Cost Fallacy a Fallacy?

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