202203210845 Sunk cost fallacy

A sunk cost is one that has been incurred and cannot be recovered. These sunk costs should therefore be irrelevant to decisions about the future because they are irretrievable and unalterably finalized. However, many people in every day life are susceptible to allowing these costs to attach them to a particular future decision.¹

For instance, someone who's gambled a lot of money and lost will view that as a reason to keep gambling more money. They might believe that they "have to" get lucky at some point, or that they need to keep gambling to try to recover those costs.

This particular type of fallacious decision making demonstrates the 202201101943 The fundamental irony of many poor decisions.