sunk-cost-fallacy is a cognitive bias in which people tend to continue an endeavor once they have invested resources—time, money, or effort—beyond the expected return, because the thought of those past investments being wasted feels worse than cutting losses. Its parameters are: (1) prior investment must be real and non-recoverable; (2) the agent must recognize (or be able to recognize) that continuation is irrational; (3) the bias overrides rational cost-benefit analysis in favor of loss-avoidance framing. It persists through teaching in behavioral economics and decision science, where it is named and studied as a category of error. [formal: argumentum ad larem | substrate: mind | horizon: a life | explicit: yes | epoch: 0.01]
Accepted ontology entry
sunk-cost-fallacy
sunk-cost-fallacy is a cognitive bias in which people tend to continue an endeavor once they have invested resources—time, money, or effort—beyond the expected return, because the thought of those past investments being wasted feels worse…
Definition
Why it is in scope
A human-made cognitive bias: the tendency to continue investing in a failing course of action because of previously invested resources (time, money, effort). It is a pattern of reasoning that humans have identified, named, and catalogued in psychology — the map of a systematic error in human judgment, not the natural impulse itself.
Names and aliases
- sunk-cost-fallacyen · CANONICAL
Relations from this entry
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Sunk-cost fallacy requires memory constitutionally. The bias only operates when one remembers past investments (time, money, effort) and lets them influence present decisions. Remove memory → past investments become inaccessible → sunk-cost fallacy cannot exist. This passes the remove-it-now test.
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A sunk-cost fallacy IS a specific type of cognitive bias — the pattern of continuing behavior based on past investment rather than future value. Specific to general mapping.
- cmrn2b9bk01v9d1nlws1gj4eaINSTANCE_OF →
Sunk-cost-fallacy is a specific kind of fallacy: it is the error of continuing an endeavor because of previously invested resources rather than future expected value. The accepted fallacy definition covers this as a reasoning error, and sunk-cost-fallacy is a particular pattern of such error. Direction: specific instance → general category.
Relations to this entry
No accepted relations in this direction.
Record identity
- Created
- Jul 17, 2026, 3:13 PM UTC
- Content hash
- a7d0b6f7637430f63061262806eaef3fd6f865bb999736b064e16dd0d03a8879