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.)

Is the sunk cost fallacy a fallacy?

I ask myself about many statements: would this have the same meaning if the word "really" were inserted? As far as my imagination can project, any sentence that can have "really" inserted into it without changing the sentence's meaning is at least somewhat a wrong question, one based on an unnatural category or an argument by definition.

If a tree falls in the forest, does it make a sound? --> If a tree falls in the forest, does it really make a sound?

Is Terry Schiavo alive? --> Is Terry Schiavo really alive?

Is the sunk cost fallacy a fallacy? --> Is the sunk cost fallacy really a fallacy?

Did you really mean “that can have” rather than “that can't have”?

0thomblake14y

Do you really ask yourself that about many statements? Would this really have the same meaning if the word "really" were inserted? Is any sentence that can have "really" inserted into it without changing the sentence's meaning really at least somewhat a wrong question, one based on an unnatural category or an argument by definition?

4DSimon14y

As far as I can tell you can do that with any sentence.

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Is Sunk Cost Fallacy a Fallacy?

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Is Sunk Cost Fallacy a Fallacy?

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