The Sunk Cost "Fallacy" Is Not a Fallacy
Doody argues that the sunk cost fallacy is often not a fallacy. The textbook position is that unrecoverable costs should never influence a current decision, since only future consequences matter. His counter-argument runs through the social situation people are actually in. Human beings need to be intelligible to others and to themselves, and to be seen as a reliable person to work with, and this gives them reason to act so that a coherent story can be told about their life in which their efforts were not simply wasted. Abandoning a project part-way makes that story harder to tell and advertises a misjudgment. Since being trusted as a teammate has real value, and being visibly changeable damages it, honouring a sunk cost can be the reasonable choice even when the narrow calculation says otherwise. This vault cites it as the philosophical case against treating every sunk cost as an error.
Doody argues that the sunk cost fallacy is often not a fallacy. The textbook position is that unrecoverable costs should never influence a current decision, since only future consequences matter. His counter-argument runs through the social situation people are actually in. Human beings need to be intelligible to others and to themselves, and to be seen as a reliable person to work with, and this gives them reason to act so that a coherent story can be told about their life in which their efforts were not simply wasted. Abandoning a project part-way makes that story harder to tell and advertises a misjudgment. Since being trusted as a teammate has real value, and being visibly changeable damages it, honouring a sunk cost can be the reasonable choice even when the narrow calculation says otherwise. This vault cites it as the philosophical case against treating every sunk cost as an error.
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"The Sunk Cost 'Fallacy' Is Not a Fallacy." Ergo, open access, 12405314.0006.040. The philosophical version of the rational objection. Listing only.
Where we use it
- Why You Finish the Series You Stopped Enjoying, Why We Act
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The source
https://doi.org/10.3998/ergo.12405314.0006.040
DOI: 10.3998/ergo.12405314.0006.040