Submitted by Moonside in just_post

Read this:

Suppose that, seeking a fun evening out, you pay $175 for a ticket to a new Broadway musical. Seated in the balcony, you quickly realize that the acting is bad, the sets are ugly and no one, you suspect, will go home humming the melodies.

Do you head out the door at the intermission, or stick it out for the duration?

Studies of human decision-making suggest that most people will stay put, even though money spent in the past logically should have no bearing on the choice.

No offense, but who approaches bad art like that? If I go see a movie that turns out to be just bad--ordinary badness--I still want some sort of closure to my experience. It's not at all like forcing yourself to eat all of a foul tasting sausage. Also, I've paid to access an air conditioned space with squishy chairs and it's in my schedule already and I get to talk shit about it afterwards, an experience which improves through completion.

I mean the science discussed here is presumably well supported, but holy shit where on earth did they pull their example from?

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mm_ wrote (edited )

I've noticed this a lot in economics where people will say 'you would expect the perfectly rational citizen to do X but studies show people do Y instead' and then later it's shown that Y actually is the rational choice for an unexpected 'meta-rational' reason.

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Dogmantra wrote

yeah applying this to art seems like a silly idea, a good ending can save a bad thing, like the secret good last sherlock episode

also I think they're trying to refer to the sunk cost fallacy, but that's not the case in their example, the sunk cost fallacy is about bailing before spending more money but after having received the results. In this case you haven't actually received everything you've paid for yet (i.e. the whole show), so it's not comparable.

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