Imagine you’re bored one day and decide to start flipping a coin just to pass the time. The first flip lands on heads. The second flip also lands on heads. Then the third. That’s a little unlikely. To your surprise, the fourth flip also lands on heads. At this point, you pause to consider the…
Tag: fallacy
What the sunk cost fallacy isn’t
I’ve invested too much to back out now. Is this thought a mistake, or not? Costs Every action incurs a cost. The cost is whatever you lose by taking the action. In some cases a cost can be recovered, and in other cases a cost is unrecoverable or sunk. In economics it’s said that there’s…
Possibility, necessity, and imagination
In philosophy, specifically in metaphysics, we often speak of what is “possible” or “contingent” and what is “necessary”. If something is necessarily true, then it cannot possibly be false. An example of necessary truth might be mathematical theorems. If something is contingent, then it’s true but possibly could have been false. We often talk about…
