
Fighting the Concorde effect - jayeshsalvi
http://blog.3dtin.com/fighting-the-concorde-effect
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rdl
While treating sunk costs as sunk is good, it's also important to avoid futile
thrashing between alternatives, and to recognize that you have imperfect
information at all times. There are times where it makes sense to continue to
solve a problem the same way, vs. switching to a newer and better solution as
soon as it is epsilon better. (generally, people have a lot bigger problem
with treating sunk costs as sunk, but there are cases where they thrash back
and forth and end up completing neither)

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rjprins
Yes, from the perspective of imperfect information you could (maybe even
should) view the development of a feature as research for the question: "Can
it be done and for how much?".

This way the sunk costs are just research costs, which makes the decision to
stop much easier to accept.

~~~
rdl
Even more core, it is "will users pay me/appreciate/etc. if we offer this
feature." You can simulate features in a high-per-transaction-cost manual way
for a while, just to see if people actually like it, before even developing
it.

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dalore
This same effect explains why people hold onto losing stocks/shares.

