Many of my undergrad philosophy classes occurred on the sixth floor of a brutalist, concrete rectangle at York University called The Ross Building. Being an upper-year university student with classes nestled in the middle echelons of these Soviet-chic administrative buildings meant we could use the elevators if we so chose, and – after years of lugging myself up and down the stairs like a damn peasant – the prospect of stepping into a metal box, pushing a button, and being magically delivered to my destination was too alluring to pass up.
Installed above the elevators on the ground floor of the Ross Building were small, red LED displays that told an eager young elevation aspirant how far away the elevator was. Yet in its infinite wisdom the University clearly blew its construction budget on the gazillion tons of grey concrete they used on the building’s beautiful … corners? … because they didn’t install floor-position indicators anywhere other than the main elevator lobby on the ground floor. After my classes let out I’d go to the elevator, push the button, and wait. And sometimes, wait some more.
All the while, in the back of my mind I considered taking the stairs and the decision of whether to abandon the now-closer-still-unknowably-distant elevator tormented me. Despite the shade I’ve just recently cast on stair-use, I was willing to lower myself from my magnificent elevator-using status if it meant saving 90 seconds of waiting for an elevator to arrive.
Actually, it meant saving an uncertain amount of time – it could have been 90 seconds, or 4 seconds, or 4 minutes. The point of the Sunk Cost Circuit Breaker is to share a heuristic I developed in that concrete-cornered modernist cathedral, which can be deployed in an array of life situations, and which may have been the most valuable thing to come out of my philosophy degree.
The Longer You Wait, The Less Sense It Makes
This is the heuristic to hang onto. It doesn’t apply to every situation. There are many situations in which this would be a very bad heuristic to use, like deciding whether to marry someone, or whether you should mow your front lawn. But for a certain category of situations it’s a power tool you can pull out of your decisionmaker’s toolbelt, and really cut some shit up… or just make a good decision.
The longer you wait to switch to the path you’re not already on, the less sense it makes to switch to it.
Let me explain.
Waiting for The Bus
We’ll take a structurally similar situation as my Ross Building elevator drama, but use something a bit more common: waiting for a bus. In an old-fashioned bus shelter, that doesn’t tell you when the next bus is arriving. Without an app, that tells you when the next bus is arriving. You already see the first dimension of when this heuristic applies: you’re waiting for something which you have good reason to believe will arrive, but you don’t know how long it will take, and it seems equally likely that it could be “very soon” as “very not soon at all”.
So there you are in the bus shelter, waiting for Schrödinger’s bus, and you’re close enough to wherever you’re going that your alternate method (in this case, walking) isn’t insane, just far less convenient than if the bus were to show up in two minutes. There’s parameter #2: you have an alternate option, making this a binary situation. Either wait or walk.
Let’s add one more clarification: waiting isn’t all that fun. There isn’t a bluegrass band or troupe of acrobats in the bus shelter. If that were the case, you’d want the bus to take at least an hour to arrive, and the Sunk Cost Circuit Breaker would be of no use.
But since waiting is a drag, and you don’t know how long the bus is going to take, and walking isn’t out of the question, the Sunk Cost Circuit Breaker is of supreme use, and I’m glad my philosophy degree can provide one useful thing to the world: The longer you wait [for the bus], the less sense it makes [to abandon the bus and walk].
Sunk Cost Fallacy
You cognitive bias geeks will be splashing coffee at your computer screens, having read my last sentence. “JORDAN YOU DAMN FOOL! AT ANY MOMENT, YOU CAN CHOOSE TO WALK! IT MAKES NO DIFFERENCE WHEN YOU CHOOSE TO ABANDON THE BUS!!”
I’ll tell you the same thing I told my wretched editor when he raised this after his 12th reading of my manuscript: Yeah, you’re right. But we don’t act that way.
We’re warm-blooded creatures, not robots. We fall victim to fallacies all the damn time. Better than hoping for some supernatural ability to override your habitual thinking is to implement diversions so you never even encounter the situation in the first place.
The cursed sunk cost fallacy keeps us investing in things we shouldn’t invest in, because it feels like a waste to abandon our endeavours when we’ve poured so much into them, and even worse when we’ve poured even more into them. We think it’s highly rational to see it through, but it’s highly irrational. That self-help book you aren’t enjoying, but have been working on for 18 months? The longer you wait [to ditch it], the less sense it makes [to ditch it]. Everything in our lives are gifts to us, given by past versions of ourselves. And with any gift, we have the option of whether to receive it.
The Sunk Cost Circuit Breaker is intended to get you out of these situations before you even get into them, particularly when the thing you’re investing is time.
Again, my blasted editor in his effort to simplify my meandering essays on simple concepts, tells me this entire piece should be one sentence long: Cut your losses.
(I don’t know why I don’t fire that damn fool. I would be Hemingway if he wouldn’t get in my way. Maybe I have a sunk cost thing going on with him.)
Impelling Quick Action
In case it isn’t yet clear, the point of the Sunk Cost Circuit Breaker is to motivate you to clear, quick, and decisive action. Which amplifies the miracle of this having come out of anything related to a philosophy program. But it did, and it does.
When you have a healthily functioning heuristic, it can seem to have near-miraculous powers. But just like using the right tool for the wrong job, it can get you into a ton of trouble if you don’t wield this sabre responsibly.
And of course, there’s something important to be said about discipline, about seeing things through. But that’s not true for everything. Yes, maybe it’s worth finishing that Tolstoy novel, or the high altitude training you’ve been working on so you can climb Everest, even if they suck and you have the option of abandoning them at any moment. Let’s remember, the Sunk Cost Circuit Breaker came out of waiting for an elevator. Whether I took the stairs or waited for the ride had little-to-no impact on my well-being, my future (aka my present), or pretty much anything else.
But just because the Sunk Cost Circuit Breaker came out of a philosophy department doesn’t mean it has zero use in the world. Much like a clever submission hold, when the moment arises and you can deploy it on your foe (in this case, the foe being your circumstances) you’ll watch yourself acting with the swiftness of a ninja and you’ll feel as powerful as Sartre on a sunny day.
The longer you wait, the less sense it makes.