Opposite of the sunk cost fallacy
Oct. 24th, 2012 01:45 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jackI was thinking about something recently that seems almost the opposite of the sunk cost fallacy. That is, not wanting to give something up because it was unexpectedly easy to achieve, not because you already put a lot of effort in.
In both cases, I think the "not wanting to give up on it" comes from the same source of feeling like you're missing an opportunity, even though one comes from lots of work, and one comes from getting lucky without that much work.
I see it almost interchangeably with the sunk cost fallacy when writing a story, designing a magic set, or even coding a program. I say "Aha! I thought of a really clever way of combining X and Y that lets me do Z for free". Which is often awesome. But the problem comes when Z doesn't actually help, but I'm scared I won't get any more lucky breaks, so I don't want to give this one up.
In both cases, I think the "not wanting to give up on it" comes from the same source of feeling like you're missing an opportunity, even though one comes from lots of work, and one comes from getting lucky without that much work.
I see it almost interchangeably with the sunk cost fallacy when writing a story, designing a magic set, or even coding a program. I say "Aha! I thought of a really clever way of combining X and Y that lets me do Z for free". Which is often awesome. But the problem comes when Z doesn't actually help, but I'm scared I won't get any more lucky breaks, so I don't want to give this one up.