…The sunk cost fallacy is a cognitive bias that makes you feel as if you should continue pouring money, time, or effort into a situation since you’ve already “sunk” so much into it already. This perceived sunk cost makes it difficult to walk away from the situation since you don’t want to see your resources wasted.
For example, have you ever stuck with something because you’ve already put in so much effort? Like reading a terrible book because you’re already halfway through, so you might as well find out what happens.
When falling prey to the sunk cost fallacy, “the impact of loss feels worse than the prospect of gain, so we keep making decisions based on past costs instead of future costs and benefits,” explains Yalda Safai, MD, MPH, a psychiatrist in New York City.
According to the National Institutes of Health (NIH), this leads to irrational, emotion-based decision-making, causing you to spend additional resources on a dead end instead of walking away from the situation that’s no longer serving you.1
In general it’s worth reviewing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases
Extra credit
Bayesianism
- 📺 Veritasium: The Bayesian Trap
- 📺 Julia Galef: A visual guide to Bayesian thinking
- 📺 3Blue1Brown: Bayes theorem, the geometry of changing beliefs
- Bayes’ theorem
- Bayesian inference
- Bayesian probability
- Monty Hall problem
I wanted to nap today, but couldn’t, because I had other things to attend to (but I did rest a little), so I only watched the first video, you nerd. 🤓 It was really, really good (no one should let the beginning equations be off-putting, it’s an aside for math jockies).
I’m going to crosspost this to another thread I made about willpower. Thanks so much! ❤️
I forgot to add:
This sounds like a descriptor for my whole life.
Brother, it has been for most of mine. 😂😂😖 Today, I’m working on boundaries.
Thank you for telling me that. Some say we’re soft. I say we’re caring and compassionate. And that it’s not only ok to include ourselves in our circles of compassion, but also righteous, good, and pure. The trick is knowing when to be a hardass and when not to be, lest we turn into cold, callous, uncaring, soulless walking dead.
It’s a tightrope, innit? 🃏
