The Sunk Cost Fallacy: Why You Stay on a Server You No Longer Enjoy

Pocket edition. This is a shorter version of a longer article; you can read the full edition when you have more time.

There's a situation many people recognise: you've spent years on a server that no longer entertains you. You log in out of habit, you get bored, and still you don't leave. The reason you give yourself is always the same: "I've put too many hours into it to leave now". That reasoning, which seems so logical, is precisely the trap.

The psychologists Hal Arkes and Catherine Blumer called it the sunk cost fallacy: we keep investing in something because of what we've already spent, not because of what we're going to get. But the time, money and hours already invested don't come back, whatever you do. They're spent. Staying doesn't recover them; it only adds new hours to the old ones.

The right question isn't "how much have I put in here?", but "does this give me anything from now on?". The first looks at the past, which doesn't change. The second looks at the future, which is the only thing you can decide. Everything you invest while looking backwards is time you steal from something you would actually enjoy.

Leaving a server that no longer gives you anything isn't throwing away what you lived: what you lived was yours and you've already enjoyed it. It's stopping paying, with your present, a bill from the past that never gets settled.