Sunk Cost and Haunted Ghost

Ⅰ•

How do you define a rational person, someone who is capable of cutting“Sunk Cost” with a strong will, considering that whatever cannot be recovered as if it was a burned bridge, cutting us from the road of our past, right after we had made a decision, we had passed “the point of no return”therefore, we hold no responsibility to our past . In that case, we should never felt regret, never to be haunted by the ghost of remorse, someone who can be “at ease”with every decision they made, that is, even after they had made mistakes, and still, they can convince themselves that they made their decision in accordance with their“sound mind”, that is, being “agreeable to reason”. Well, isn't that a perfect rational human being, the problem is, it is simply too perfect to be true.

To recognize a sunk cost is nothing, most people are capable of doing that, and to cast aside of it is not too difficult either, it is something less easy for a lot of people, but in the end, we will be forced to make that choice. I will not use some easy example such as throwing away some spend investment first, of course time and money means a lot to us, but the result of material lost is not strong enough to play in this argument, since we are here to discuss the phenomenon of Human mind.

The story goes like this：Sophie stood there against the gun point of Nazi madness; she was forced to make a choice, a choice between her two children, only one will be spared, and one will have to face the certain death, the choice is her to make, both will be killed if she cannot made a choice. Now if anyone wants to accuse me of being too harsh for bringing in such rare example, I am quite willing to accept the accusation, but, I do have my reason, because in a radical example regarding choice such as this one, we can see more clearly the seemingly secured “Rationality”can have its opposite side of being both shaky and absurd, surely Sophie had made a“rational choice”, no one can blame her on any bases, but it is the variable cost we have considered here, in order to understand the dilemma of rational choice .

Ⅱ•

In various fields of ideas, “Rationality”can mean diverse thing, we should not be convinced of all of it, at least not too willingly, considering most of it were based on idealized, conditioned modules, they were hypothesis casts living Human Being as being perfectly reacting to accurate event. In those modules, every one is expected to function as some kind of “superior statisticians”, that is, being able to make reasonable decision in accordance with their “sound mind”.Well, even the all mighty Himself must look at those people with envy, especially the day He decided that He had to flood out the entire production on His making.

Rationality is being able to identify and differentiate what lies in front of oneself, and being able to decide what should be left behind as irretrievable loss, never to create a situation of“cost overrun”just to save money or face. Strangely enough, people tends to prefer avoiding losses than acquiring gains, the“illusion of loss aversion” often tuned out to be the strongest motive that drives our behavior . Again we will have to brings out the problem of“What kinds of choice, it is far easier when we are dealing with a ticket, or a few bucks, but, can it still be that easy when we are dealing with human relationship？or a life？most of all, should it be that easy？If we recollect the ghost that haunted Sophie and Macbeth, the answer may seem to be less reassuring for us to trust the power of rationality.

Why do we value rationality so much？One of the reasons is because we as human beings are intrinsically motivated to master our environments, to have an effect on or to cope successfully with the world of people and objects, and, most of all, to get the “best”output of decision. We feel most“at home”“at ease”when we are in a rational surrounding, irrational people seems to be so full of uncertainty, so full of threat, just remember how we criticize those Romanticist, they allows emotion took controlled of them, always taking risky bet out of life, until they face either madness or death, we easily judged them as the victim of“status quo bias”,that is, definitely “irrational”.

Let us break away from those serious issues for a moment, now, a graduate student of philosophy can already be considered as a rational adult, why does one decides to attended the school in the major of philosophy？To start, one have to allocated scarce resources to the whole processes, notably two or three years of their life and a lot of moneys, while they are attending college, they will not have time to do some other things, like working full – time, fooling around, which means, some“ cost ”will have to be paid, and quite possible, will be paid alone the rest of their life.

The best time of your life will be spend studying something with obscure answer, and most likely it will not cash in much in this reality - based world, you are now devoting a significant amount of your life to something uncertain, except a paper of degree, which will sounds more rational with the letter of M.B.A on it. Why do we invest our scare resources in this way？It will be too disrespectful to say that we are just being leaded by social conditions, or that we are just a bunch of romantic idealist, at least, there ware some rational thinking performs alone the way, before we made that decision.

The very moment that we make our decision, it most likely we had planted the ghost of regrets, which will haunt us in the future, especially as we looked back at those decision as“Sunk Cost”, because we will look at those decisions as economic one, in the sense of a “bad investment”. The mental states of humanity is not a direct copy of physical world, after all, there is a difference between our cognition and the complex social surrounding, which exist outside the willful thinking of our simple recognition, we perceive the phenomenon as reality, and function in accordance to that perception, thus to establish a rationality to secure our way of daily life.

It all seems to be so “natural”, but the true reality is far from that simple deduction, the fairy tale of Cinderella mentioned how her sister tried to cut off part of her feet, in order to fit in the glass slippers, based on ideal hypotheses to solve the problem of human mental states, is itself very much like that conditioned act. But, in accordance to Newton's first law of motion, if there is an outside force, any stable condition will be changed into a direction beyond our feeble minds can predict, rationality is something more than just making accurate prediction, efficient control, what more important is to act in accordance to our mind, before the inner conflict turned into ghosts that can destroy us.

When we examined deep into human nature, or analyzing our own mental state, we can see how we are the main sculptor who shapes ourselves, thru imagination or fabrication, based on our observation and the actions that follow, we realize our cognition into reality, the experience of our experience becomes parts of ourselves, good or bad, apart from a few successful“investments”, we looked back at more “Sunk Cost”than anyone can bear, how do we deal with it？how can we find a “exit strategy”, most people will tried to find comfort thru excuses, it is far easy to convince ourselves that it was not our fault, so we can puts the blame on someone else or some other cause such as fate, in away , these are the lucky ones, because some of them won't be haunted by the ghost that leap out of their minds .

We had mentioned the tragedy of Sophie, her choice was the work of human evil, against her free will, now what about Mcbeth？ He tried his best to analyze his mind in accordance to reason, and worked its way to rationality, he even foresee the possible“Sunk Cost”of his acts, but all it takes was a few mockery, and crumbled was his rationality. Maybe the decision we make in our action all thru our life is not so much different from that of Macbeth, considering so many of us walked ourselves into the abyss of despair, it is the “ghost”of our remorse that achieved its goal, as we ceaselessly looked back at the “Sunk Cost”.

Ⅲ•

Who takes rationality as prisoner？Well, no one but ourselves, clearly we can understand that rationality is no guarantee of a wise, or even a correct decision, numerous decisions we will have to make in a lifetime, be it short or long, and definitely many of them will be viewed by us or other as “bad investment”, wise we may not become, after all, “To err is Human”, does that sounds like seeking“excuses”？Maybe, but that is not exactly what we are trying to do here, we are only trying to finds a “Way out”off the abyss, it the constant reminiscences of the“Sunk Cost”that will destroyed our mind, not the “Sunk Cost”itself.

Obsession means that the more we believe in something, the more easy it is for us to becomes of it, rationality is not the cure for everything, it is not even the definite solution of anything, it is rather function as an antidote against obsession, as well as the status quo biases surrounding it. It is easy to maintain rationality while working on a conditioned module, but human nature often involves interactive relationship among subject, and every individual life is an irreversible process, “Sunk Cost”and“Haunted Ghost”are like twins, we will be kidding ourselves to say that we can dismiss the regret of our mistakes, and just get on with our life as if nothing had happened, the “Ghost”will always be there to haunt us, just as the “Sunk Cost”is a past that will never go away.

In the world of our minds, dilemma is what we have to face all our life, with no remorse, we are just heartless beast, with too much remorse, we will be eaten alive by our own ghosts, the phenomenon of our minds can walked its way out of the past, a past with all its ghosts, or embrace a present of peace at hand, it is a difficult task, but so is life, life is a risky investment, its up to us, and us alone, we choose how to live it.

REFERANCES：

Kahneman, Deniel.（2002） Maps of Bounded Rationality, Stockholm：Nobel Foundation.
Gal, David. （2006） “A Psychological Law of Inertia and the Illusion of Loss Aversion”, Judgment and Decision Making. Stanford：Stanford University.