I recently walked through the city to visit some shop, of which there are two in the city. While walking, I noticed that the one I was walking to is actually farther than the other one. The shorter one actually needed me to backtrack like 500m. I decided to keep walking to the farther one, simply because taking the new route would at least give me new impressions, instead of seeing the same building left and right when backtracking. While walking the farther way, I believe it felt shorter, because time passes slower when backtracking.
Not disputing the results, it's just how I experience the world personally, and that only touches the backtracking.
I feel like there’s scientists must have spent a long time researching this seemingly new phenomenon before discovering that the sunk cost fallacy was widely studied. And at that point rather than spend the effort to correct their conclusions they decided to double down and spend even more effort on trying to spin their work as something new and unrelated to the sunk cost fallacy.
Seems like it would be a survival trait in the wild. Doubling back reduces your exploration rate (you're not updating your map as much and you're less likely to spot some new snack) while increasing your exposure to unknown predators that might have been alerted but not positively identified you the first time. There's still good reasons to double back, like trying to outwit a known, active pursuer or evader, or being in a very hazardous environment. All else being equal, though, I'd think continuing forward would be more beneficial overall.
This "unknown phenomenon" is so unknown that it is one of the most discussed topics in behavioral psychology. Even in popular science it is well known.
Some of the most well known books about psychology, like "thinking fast and slow", describe how humans act seemingly irrational under various scenarios. Finding another example is the exact opposite of "unidentified".
Surely the researchers must be aware of the discourse and the competing theories to explain the thousands of other examples of this?
Looks like this experiment is conducted in US. If you are walking in US, you'll end up on nextdoor and if you went one way, changed your mind and went the other way, your picture will be on nextdoor from many people's ring/etc cameras, reporting a suspicious person walking on the street and if other neighbors have seen this suspicious person.
Brian does not want to work like a GPS to continuously suggest an alternate route. The purpose of thinking is not to think. Thinking is hard work and it takes some effort to make a decision. Once a decision is made, to constantly reevaluate the decision takes extraordinary mental energy and a mindset thats second guessing your own decisions every second.
My wife calls it going backwards to go forward and she can't stand it. Even planning a trip across multiple countries she needed our overall flight plans to move in a single direction.
I see this all the time in tech, where a solution is found for a problem, but later that solution will have problems of its own. Then the focus becomes solving the solution's problem, and even the solution's problem solution's problems.
All that in lieu of coming back to the original problem and rethinking how to solve it.
You know what's funny, I almost never see people turn-around and go backwards in real life. I do it all the time when I change my mind, but other people just don't do it. It's one of those things that makes this world feel like a simulation rather than 8 billion people actually thinking for themselves.
Study 2: generate 40 words, after 10, ask whether they want to switch to a different letter and restart from 0. The researchers expect people to 1) know that there are more words in their language with the second letter so it’s easier 2) expect them to think it’s so much faster it’s worth undoing 25% progress.
I’m sorry but this sounds like bad science, as is common in this field.
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[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 39.8 ms ] threadI recently walked through the city to visit some shop, of which there are two in the city. While walking, I noticed that the one I was walking to is actually farther than the other one. The shorter one actually needed me to backtrack like 500m. I decided to keep walking to the farther one, simply because taking the new route would at least give me new impressions, instead of seeing the same building left and right when backtracking. While walking the farther way, I believe it felt shorter, because time passes slower when backtracking.
Not disputing the results, it's just how I experience the world personally, and that only touches the backtracking.
Some of the most well known books about psychology, like "thinking fast and slow", describe how humans act seemingly irrational under various scenarios. Finding another example is the exact opposite of "unidentified".
Surely the researchers must be aware of the discourse and the competing theories to explain the thousands of other examples of this?
E.g. Cursor’s “Discard and revert” option, which I miss in Claude Code.
Cursor trains us out of the aversion to doubling back.
So do you always circle around the Earth in order to get back home?
All that in lieu of coming back to the original problem and rethinking how to solve it.
Study 2: generate 40 words, after 10, ask whether they want to switch to a different letter and restart from 0. The researchers expect people to 1) know that there are more words in their language with the second letter so it’s easier 2) expect them to think it’s so much faster it’s worth undoing 25% progress.
I’m sorry but this sounds like bad science, as is common in this field.