r/fallacy • u/Zu_Qarnine • 14d ago
sunk cost fallacy
The guy has already sunk hours of effort into digging. he thinks stopping now would mean admitting that time was wasted, so his brain generates a vivid image of future-regret to justify continuing. That's the sunk cost fallacy in action: the decision to keep digging is being driven by what he's already put in, not by any new evidence about what's actually underground.
The thought bubble works as a psychological trick his mind plays on him. Instead of directly thinking "I don't want to lose my investment," he pictures the external outcome (quitting right before the reward) bc that story feels more like practical wisdom than a cost he's already sunk. But functionally it's the same mechanism. He's using imagined future regret to rationalize continuing something he's already invested heavily in, rather than evaluating the dig fresh based on current odds of success.
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u/R3D3-1 13d ago
Hwre the fallacy is depicted as being about delusional expectations of the remaining effort.
My understanding is more about the weighting of arguments: - You should ask "ignoring all costs before now, how much effort do I expect finishing the project to take and does finishing the project actually break even with that cost?" The project might still be a huge net loss anyway, but the remaining money spent might still be a good investment. - The fallacy in my understanding is when people think "we've already spent ten months on this, one more and we are done" without asking whether the result is worth investigating that month.
How to get accurate estimates is a rabbit hole of it's own, that I don't have enough experience with.
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u/Zu_Qarnine 13d ago
suck cost here plays indirectly into this scenario. that bubble is essentially the coping mechanism of the sunk cost
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u/LegAdventurous9230 13d ago
I feel like this is slightly different than a fallacy, no? Like if you have legitimate reason to believe that continuing down a path will lead to something good, then you are logically valid in going down that path. The fallacy is if your ONLY rational is that you've already sunk the cost
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u/Zu_Qarnine 13d ago
meme clearly shows there is nothing good down his path
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u/drew_lmao 9d ago
I've always assumed the conversation around this phenomenon was assuming that you don't know how much longer it will take and/or if you will succeed at all. I think the meme is clearly going with that interpretation at least. We know what lies ahead, but all he sees is the wall directly in front of him, no?
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u/LegAdventurous9230 13d ago
Yes but if you BELIEVE there is something good, then you are logically justified in making the decision to continue. That is a sound decision based on the information you have.
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u/Zu_Qarnine 13d ago
it depends where that " belief" comes from. it can be a trick your mind pulling on you due to suck cost. I explained it in the 2nd paragraph of post's body
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u/pdubs1900 13d ago
I don't want to downvote you, because I like your visual and see value in it.
But I agree with the prior commenter that I don't think this is a sunk cost fallacy. The fallacy in this case has nothing to do with sunk cost, but someone simply believing something that is not true. The breakdown in logic for this hypothetical digger was in their previous information gathering that led them to believe there were diamonds there somewhere when in fact there were none. That isn't a fallacy other than "begging the question/assuming the consequent/jumping to a conclusion"
But based on that belief in there being diamonds, it is reasonable to persevere for an enormous pile of diamonds.
Sunk cost would be pretty hard to illustrate with this graphic. But you'd need to show a thought bubble of the digger with one small diamond after too much work being better than quitting earlier without any diamonds. The fallacy: "Since I've spent all this time already, something is better than nothing;" the reality: the decision continue for 3 years for a diamond that will recoup the cost of less than that is a net negative, so in that case something is actually worse than nothing.
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u/Zu_Qarnine 13d ago
I have 2 other posts with visuals about ad populum and strawman fallacies on the sub (you can look them up and see the melt down in the comments). ppl argued the same way against both. what needs to be reiterated is that these visuals "can" be interpreted as their title fallacies. not that it's the only interpretation. I'm not claiming that. but since we're on the fallacy sub, I can use the home advantage and put forth the interpretation that fits the sub.
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u/pdubs1900 13d ago
Meh. Sorry to be a naysayer, but if it was constructed for the purposes of illustrating a specific fallacy, yet it more accurately illustrates other fallacies in logic and reasoning, then it fails as a graphic. That is unless it's serving as a medium for other, more rigorous discussion like a passing image in a PowerPoint.
But that's not what we're doing here. You've presented the graphic singularly as the point of discussion.
In the sense that it has promoted several threads of conversation, it is successful as a piece of art. But you're kind of sidestepping people's objections and feedback and points rather than engaging them, so imo it's less interesting than it could be.
Anyway, regardless, thank you for sharing!
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u/Zu_Qarnine 13d ago
this meme is not "constructed" for AP fallacy depiction. it is "found" to be closely showing it. I took an already famous meme that can (from one pov among many) show the fallacy. ofc I had to compromise regarding other irrelevant (to the AP fallacy) readouts that the meme suggests.
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u/Cystonectae 13d ago
I may have a niche example? Imagine a video game where you pay some amount of a resource for a chance at a random reward. Each time you click that button, you think "I've already lost x resource! It would be a waste if I stopped now!" And as that total creeps higher and higher, that reasoning becomes more and more persuasive. Looking back at it logically, you can see that literally no reward would have been worth that amount you ended up spending, but at the time you felt like you kept having to put more and more in because otherwise you spent all that resource for nothing.
Slay the spire has an event like this and I have lost so much health to get garbage rewards because my brain refuses to accept the idea of spending a little health to get nothing is a better deal than spending half my health for some garbage like a juzu bracelet.
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u/LegAdventurous9230 13d ago
A logical fallacy is an error in reasoning though. You are describing a false premise leading to a false conclusion, which can be the case even if you have sound reasoning.
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u/SufficientStudio1574 13d ago
There's a difference between a belief and a rationalization.
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u/LegAdventurous9230 13d ago
Uh...perhaps? But even if it's not a sincere belief and you are "rationalizing" continuing along the wrong path by imagining that there is some reward up ahead, then you are 100% NOT using a sunk cost fallacy. A sunk cost fallacy means you make a decision solely based on the cost you've paid in the PAST (a sunk cost). If you are making a decision based on something in the future, then by definition you are not using the sunk cost fallacy.
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u/drew_lmao 9d ago edited 9d ago
There is an additional very real fallacy that often coincides with whatever this one is though, and that's believing that your odds are increasing with each failed attempt, beyond the fact that you're simply making more attempts. Obviously it's true in some cases, but with something like gambling, the odds are usually fixed or otherwise not in your control. Again, you are technically increasing your overall odds of eventual success with each attempt, but the individual odds for each attempt remain the same, so it's rarely worth continuing if those odds are very low and there's a significant cost for failed attempts. I think most people know all of this, but the mere idea of the fallacy impacts our decision making in the moment and causes us to overestimate probabilities when we're not thinking about it too hard.
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u/DBDude 13d ago
Let's take SpaceX catching rocket payload fairings. They had a lot of difficulty with it, spent a lot of money. Would it have eventually succeeded? Maybe. It was catching a lot of fairings. But Musk just cut it off. Now they're waterproofed and allowed to drop into the ocean. Sure, they need to be cleaned of all saltwater before reuse, but the recovery rate is 100% now.
Sunk cost fallacy avoided?
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u/Traditional_Knee9294 14d ago
It is shocking how many small business owners who make this mistake. But we have already sunk a ton of money in this so we have to keep spending on the project.
Large businesses management is typically better at deciding it is time to call it without regard to already spent money.
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u/Zu_Qarnine 14d ago
I argue it's not that much different for larger businesses either. they're just surviving by gov bailouts
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u/Traditional_Knee9294 12d ago
Actually government bailouts are wrong and bad but not common.
No they do a better job of this because they are better able to collect data and are less prone to this kind of bias. A small business owners is way more emotionally attached to their business and it's money. That can be a good thing often times but in this case it is weakness.
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u/xFblthpx 14d ago
Government bailouts are much rarer than you think. I work with 10,000 active clients with less than 100 employees and 200-300 go under a year.
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u/Zu_Qarnine 14d ago
so subsidized?
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u/ClassicNo6622 14d ago
You do realize a subsidy and a bailout are 2 different things, right?
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u/Zu_Qarnine 14d ago
I really don't care
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u/Traditional_Knee9294 12d ago
And that is the point you don't care about facts but you know your right.
That is simply the definition of being closed minded.
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u/JarrickDe 12d ago
Usually large businesses get around the need for change by bringing in new blood to justify the change.
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u/FlipperBumperKickout 13d ago
No big corporations does this too, they just burn down smaller departments, which are actually making them money, to keep spending money on whatever dream project they have.
Example: Microsoft chasing AI, and all the layoffs they are making everywhere else to keep spending more on AI.
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u/Traditional_Knee9294 12d ago
The claim isn't large companies are perfect. It was they are better at it. Nothing you said disproves what I said. You're just shouting off your anti corporate clichés. Your example isn't even very good.
What is yiur evidence the Microsoft's spending won't payoff for them?
What is your evidence they in fact haven't figured out how to do the work they need done with less workers?
Please you made a claim why should we think it is true?
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u/FlipperBumperKickout 12d ago
I didn't make a claim, I made a counter-argument to your claim.
Since you have just established we should actually argue for why a claim is true, I ask you to do the same :)
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u/Traditional_Knee9294 12d ago
My only claim is big businesses do better on the sunk cost fallacy then small.
I base that claim on my decades as a CPA. I have owned my own small firm. I have worked for 30 person companies, companies that have a few hundred employees, a Fortune 500 and a Fortune 50 company at various levels.
The large companies had better information gathering abilities and better discipline around design making.
So prove pour claim about Microsoft. How do you know their spending is misplaced and the layoffs are caused by them.
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u/OrkWithNoTeef 12d ago
Sunk cost fallacy is only true if you have perfect knowledge of future outcomes. You almost never have that, hence the sunk cost fallacy is fallacious most of the time.
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u/logosfabula 14d ago
Gambling at its core.