Expectations & sunk costs
I train soft skills as my day job and am lucky enough to feel consistently engaged and challenged by it. Recently my class was on critical thinking and so I came to the topic of some thinking traps we humans fall into as well as certain fallacies. In particular, I was recently struck by the sunk cost fallacy. The sunk cost fallacy is quite interesting once we run into it for ourselves. In essence, we stop thinking logically or critically once we have invested money or time (the sunk cost) into something. For example, we buy tickets for an event or show then feel obliged to go, or keep watching, even if we are no longer interested. “We should go; we’ve spent the money after all and there are no refunds.” For me this struck while playing the video game Bioshock Infinite. This game received very high acclaim and great reviews overall, marking the third game in a series where the first is widely considered among the greatest games of all time I’m not having too much fun i...