Mental models/Sunk Cost Fallacy
Behavioral & Decision Making

Sunk Cost Fallacy

The tendency to continue an endeavour due to previously invested resources (time, money, effort) that cannot be recovered, rather than future value.

In plain language

People factor in past investments when making future decisions, even when those investments are irrecoverable. Progress bars exploit this deliberately.

In the wild

Implementations of this model aren’t wired to this view yet — they live in the implementations table.

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