Why is it a fallacy when it makes so much sense intuitively?
In: Other
It’s only a fallacy if you really can’t dig yourself out of the hole, if you’d just be “throwing good money after bad.”
So for example, let’s say you think it’s only a 10 minute walk between your house and your friend’s place. You start walking and after 20 minutes you’re still not there, it turned out to be much farther away than you thought. You consider giving up and walking home. If your friend’s place is 30 minutes away from your house, then it’s not a sunk cost, you only have 10 more minutes of walking to get to your destination. You’d have to walk back for *20* minutes if you were to turn around now.
But if you’re friend’s place is an *hour* away from your house, then you’re still 40 minutes away, and it makes more sense to just turn around and walk the 20 minutes home. You may have already wasted 20 minutes of walking, but you’ll be walking even more if you don’t turn around now.
The sunk cost fallacy only applies to situations where if you keep along your current path, you’re still not going to achieve your goal. Or a situation where keeping along your current path will require more costs than you’re even going to receive in the end, making it not worth it. There are some situations where “I’ve already come this far, I can’t give up now” makes sense and isn’t a fallacy.
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