I believe Sniffnoy, like myself, gave the author the benefit of the doubt and assumed that he was not actually trying to argue against a fundamental principle of logic and decision theory but rather claiming that the principle applies to humans far less than often assumed. If this interpretation is not valid then it would suggest that the body of the post is outright false (and logically incoherent) rather than merely non-sequitur with respect to the title and implied conclusion.
Sniffnoy claims that gwern has argued “that the sunk cost fallacy is a mode of reasoning which doesn’t often occur, rather than one that is valid.”
Actually, what gwern has argued is that while the sunk cost fallacy is often used as an heuristic there is little evidence that it is sound to do so in real world situations. This also seems to be what you’ve said, but it is not what Sniffnoy has said.
Hence my confusion.
On a side note, I don’t really understand your qualms with the title, but that’s less important to me.
On a side note, I don’t really understand your qualms with the title, but that’s less important to me.
The qualms are similar in nature to if I encoutered an article:
Is 7+6 = 16 not an arithmetic error? followed by an article explaining that it doesn’t matter because humans only have 10 fingers, it’s not like anyone counts on their toes and besides, sometimes it’s healthier to believe the answer is 16 anyway because you were probably going to make a mistake later in the calculation and you need to cancel it out.
I believe Sniffnoy, like myself, gave the author the benefit of the doubt and assumed that he was not actually trying to argue against a fundamental principle of logic and decision theory but rather claiming that the principle applies to humans far less than often assumed. If this interpretation is not valid then it would suggest that the body of the post is outright false (and logically incoherent) rather than merely non-sequitur with respect to the title and implied conclusion.
Sniffnoy claims that gwern has argued “that the sunk cost fallacy is a mode of reasoning which doesn’t often occur, rather than one that is valid.”
Actually, what gwern has argued is that while the sunk cost fallacy is often used as an heuristic there is little evidence that it is sound to do so in real world situations. This also seems to be what you’ve said, but it is not what Sniffnoy has said.
Hence my confusion.
On a side note, I don’t really understand your qualms with the title, but that’s less important to me.
The qualms are similar in nature to if I encoutered an article:
Is 7+6 = 16 not an arithmetic error? followed by an article explaining that it doesn’t matter because humans only have 10 fingers, it’s not like anyone counts on their toes and besides, sometimes it’s healthier to believe the answer is 16 anyway because you were probably going to make a mistake later in the calculation and you need to cancel it out.