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Comment by defertoreptar | Hacker News Reader

I'm not sure I'm following. In the example, there's a sunk cost of dressing up and setting aside time. Then, other than sunk cost, there's the probable future cost of reduced cooperation as well as cost in rapport and morale. I don't see those things as sunk cost because the decision to go or not go can influence those costs.

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The idea is this: the "rational" thing would be to sell the tickets for $500 a pop. However, even if there's just a probability of cooperation and social rapport suffering†, it wouldn't be irrational to honor the sunk cost and still attend the concert.

In the paper, the "Camping Rainstorm" example is similar in spirit. Instead of the protagonist suffering what the author calls a "diachronic misfortune," maybe in having no plans for the rest of the night, maybe in suffering a cooperation loss vis-a-vis the spouse, etc., they honor the sunken cost.

† I'd probably argue it's guaranteed.

I think you and the blog post author are making the same mistake. You're just not putting a dollar value on these social costs. If the blog author valued their partner's feeling they would enumerate upsetting them as a cost and it wouldn't be so clear that you're earning $500. But rather you're earning $500 less the cost to your personal relationship.

This is a similar mistake to failing to price other intangibles like risk.

It’s an odd mistake to make, since it implicitly recognizes that someone may value the experience of seeing the concert more than $500, but fails to recognize that someone may value their close social relationships more than $500.

It’s not rational to choose receiving $500 and having your wife and friends be upset at you, unless you value the $500 more than having your wife and friends be on good terms with you. That’s a tautology, of course, but apparently it needs to be said.

This is the most correct answer I’ve seen in this thread. Not all costs are dollar prices.

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