It is sad and annoying that if you do a mediocre job (according to the receiver), doing things even for free (volunteer work/gifting) can sabotage the receiver along the dimension you’re supposedly helping.
This is super vague the way I wrote it, so examples.
Example 1. Bob wants to upgrade and buy a new quality headphone. He has a $300 budget. His friend Tim not knowing his budget, bought a $100 headphone for Bob. (Suppose second-handed headphones are worthless) Now Bob cannot just spend $300 to get a quality headphone. He would also waste Tim’s $100 which counterfactually could have been used to buy something else for Bob. So Bob is stuck with using the $100 headphone and spending the $300 somewhere else instead.
Example 2. Andy, Bob, and Chris are the only three people who translates Chinese books to English for free as a hobby. Because there are so many books out there, it is often not worth it to re-translate a book even if the previous one is bad, because spending that time to translate a different book is just more helpful to others. Andy and Bob are pretty good, but Chris absolutely sucks. It is not unreadable, but they are just barely better than machine translation. Now Chris has taken over to translate book X, which happens a pretty good book. The world is now stuck with Chris’ poor translation on book X with Andy and Bob never touching it again because they have other books to work on.
Allocation of blame/causality is difficult, but I think you have it wrong.
ex. 1 … He would also waste Tim’s $100 which counterfactually could have been used to buy something else for Bob. So Bob is stuck with using the $100 headphone and spending the $300 somewhere else instead.
No. TIM wasted $100 on a headset that Bob did not want (because he planned to buy a better one). Bob can choose whether to to hide this waste (at a cost of the utility loss by having $300 and worse listening experience, but a “benefit” of misleading Tim about his misplaced altruism), or to discard the gift and buy the headphones like he’d already planned (for the benefit of being $300 poorer and having better sound, and the cost of making Tim feel bad but perhaps learning to ask before wasting money).
ex. 2 The world is now stuck with Chris’ poor translation on book X with Andy and Bob never touching it again because they have other books to work on.
Umm, here I just disagree. The world is no worse off for having a bad translation than having no translation. If the bad translation is good enough that the incremental value of a good translation doesn’t justify doing it, then that is your answer. If it’s not valuable enough to change the marginal decision to translate, then Andy or Bob should re-translate it. Either way, Chris has improved the value of books, or has had no effect except wasting his own time.
Bob can choose whether to to hide this waste (at a cost of the utility loss by having $300 and worse listening experience, but a “benefit” of misleading Tim about his misplaced altruism)
True in my example. I acknowledge that my example is wrong and should have been more explicit about having an alternative. Quoting myself from the comment to Vladimir_Nesov:
Anyways, the unwritten thing is that Bob care about having a quality headphone and a good pair of shoes equally. So given that he already has an alright headphone, he would get more utility by buying a good pairs of shoes instead. It is essentially a choice between (a) getting a $300 headphone and (b) getting a $100 headphone and a $300 pair of shoes.
If the bad translation is good enough that the incremental value of a good translation doesn’t justify doing it, then that is your answer.
I do accept this as the rational answer, doesn’t mean it is not irritating. If A (skillful translator) cares about having a good translation of X slightly more than Y, and B (poor translator) cares about Y much more than X. If B can act first, he can work on X and “force” A (via expected utility) to work on Y. This is a failure of mine to not talk about difference in preference in my examples and expect people to extrapolate and infer it out.
Now Bob cannot just spend $300 to get a quality headphone. He would also waste Tim’s $100
That’s a form of sunk cost fallacy, a collective “we’ve sacrificed too much to stop now”.
Andy and Bob never touching it again because they have other books to work on
That doesn’t follow, the other books would’ve also been there without existence of this book’s poor translation. If the poor translation eats some market share, so that competing with it is less appealing, that could be a valid reason.
This is a tangent, but Sunk cost fallacy is not really a fallacy most of the time, because spending more resources beforehand really increases the chance of “success” most of the time. For more: https://gwern.net/sunk-cost
I am trying to pinpoint the concept of “A doing a mediocre job of X will force B to rationally do Y instead of X, making the progress of X worse than if A had not done anything”. The examples are just examples that hopefully helps you locate the thing I am handwaving at. I do not try to make them logically perfect because that would take too much time.
Anyways, the unwritten thing is that Bob care about having a quality headphone and a good pair of shoes equally. So given that he already has an alright headphone, he would get more utility by buying a good pairs of shoes instead. It is essentially a choice between (a) getting a $300 headphone and (b) getting a $100 headphone and a $300 pair of shoes. Of course there are some arguments about preference, utility != dollar amount or something along those lines. But (b) is the better option in my constructed example to show the point.
spending more resources beforehand really increases the chance of “success” most of the time
The decision to go on with the now-easier rest-of-the-plan can be correct, it’s not the case that all plans must always be abandoned on the grounds of “sunk cost fallacy”. The fallacy is when the prior spending didn’t actually secure the rest of the current plan as the best course of action going forward. Alternatives can emerge that are better than continuing and don’t make any use of the sunk resources.
It sure can! I think we are in agreement on sunk cost fallacy. I just don’t think it applies to example 1 because there exists alternatives that can keep the sunk resources. Btw this is why my example is on the order of $100, at this price point you probably have a couple alternative things to buy to spend the money.
I just don’t think it applies to example 1 because there exists alternatives that can keep the sunk resources.
What matters is if those alternatives are better (and can be executed on, rather than being counterfactual). It doesn’t matter why they are better. Being better because they made use of the sunk resources (and might’ve become cheaper as a result) is no different from being better for other reasons. The sunk cost fallacy is giving additional weight to the alternatives that specifically use sunk resources, instead of simply choosing based on which alternatives are now better.
Again, seems like we are in agreement lol. I agree with what you said and I meant that, but tried to compress it into one sentence and failed to communicate.
(I need to defend the sad and the annoying in two separate parts)
Yes, and but sometimes that is already annoying on its own (Bob is not perfectly rational and sometimes he just really want the quality headphone, but now math tells Bob that Tim gifting him that headphone means he would have to wait e.g. ~2 years before it is worth buying a new one). Of course Bob can improve his life in other ways with his saved money, but still, would be nice if you can just ask Tim to buy something else if you had known.
Sometimes increasing sum(projects) does not translate directly to increasing utility. This is more obvious in real life scenarios where actors are less rational and time is a real concept. The sad thing happens when someone with good intention but with poor skill (and you don’t know they are that bad) signing up to a time-critical project and failing/doing sub-par
Seems like the problem is that in real life people are not perfectly rational, and also they have an instinct to reciprocate when they receive a gift (at least by saying “thank you” and not throwing the gift away).
In a world where Bob is perfectly rational and Tim has zero expectations about his gift, the situation is simple. Previously, Bob’s choices were “spend $300 on good headphone”, “spend $100 on bad headphone and $200 on something else”, and “spend $300 on something else”. Tim’s action replaced the last two options with a superior alternative “use Tim’s headphone and spend $300 on something else”. Bob’s options were not made worse.
But real people are not utility maximizers. We instinctively try to choose a locally better option, and how we feel about it depends on what we perceive as the baseline. Given the choice between 10 utilons and 3 utilons, we choose 10 and feel like we just “gained 7 utilons”. Given the choice between 10 utilons and 9 utilons, we choose 10 again, but this time we feel like we just “gained 1 utilon”. Given the choice between 10 utilons and 10 utilons of a different flavor, we might feel annoyed about having to choose.
Also, if Tim expects Bob to reciprocate in a certain way, the new options are not strictly better, because “spend $300 on good headphone” got replaced by “spend $300 on good headphone, but owe Tim a favor for giving me the $100 headphone I didn’t use”.
There are infinite things to be sad and annoyed by, should you choose to focus on those. :) I’d rather focus on the world as a whole being made better in your examples.
It is sad and annoying that if you do a mediocre job (according to the receiver), doing things even for free (volunteer work/gifting) can sabotage the receiver along the dimension you’re supposedly helping.
This is super vague the way I wrote it, so examples.
Example 1. Bob wants to upgrade and buy a new quality headphone. He has a $300 budget. His friend Tim not knowing his budget, bought a $100 headphone for Bob. (Suppose second-handed headphones are worthless) Now Bob cannot just spend $300 to get a quality headphone. He would also waste Tim’s $100 which counterfactually could have been used to buy something else for Bob. So Bob is stuck with using the $100 headphone and spending the $300 somewhere else instead.
Example 2. Andy, Bob, and Chris are the only three people who translates Chinese books to English for free as a hobby. Because there are so many books out there, it is often not worth it to re-translate a book even if the previous one is bad, because spending that time to translate a different book is just more helpful to others. Andy and Bob are pretty good, but Chris absolutely sucks. It is not unreadable, but they are just barely better than machine translation. Now Chris has taken over to translate book X, which happens a pretty good book. The world is now stuck with Chris’ poor translation on book X with Andy and Bob never touching it again because they have other books to work on.
Allocation of blame/causality is difficult, but I think you have it wrong.
No. TIM wasted $100 on a headset that Bob did not want (because he planned to buy a better one). Bob can choose whether to to hide this waste (at a cost of the utility loss by having $300 and worse listening experience, but a “benefit” of misleading Tim about his misplaced altruism), or to discard the gift and buy the headphones like he’d already planned (for the benefit of being $300 poorer and having better sound, and the cost of making Tim feel bad but perhaps learning to ask before wasting money).
Umm, here I just disagree. The world is no worse off for having a bad translation than having no translation. If the bad translation is good enough that the incremental value of a good translation doesn’t justify doing it, then that is your answer. If it’s not valuable enough to change the marginal decision to translate, then Andy or Bob should re-translate it. Either way, Chris has improved the value of books, or has had no effect except wasting his own time.
True in my example. I acknowledge that my example is wrong and should have been more explicit about having an alternative. Quoting myself from the comment to Vladimir_Nesov:
Anyways, the unwritten thing is that Bob care about having a quality headphone and a good pair of shoes equally. So given that he already has an alright headphone, he would get more utility by buying a good pairs of shoes instead. It is essentially a choice between (a) getting a $300 headphone and (b) getting a $100 headphone and a $300 pair of shoes.
I do accept this as the rational answer, doesn’t mean it is not irritating. If A (skillful translator) cares about having a good translation of X slightly more than Y, and B (poor translator) cares about Y much more than X. If B can act first, he can work on X and “force” A (via expected utility) to work on Y. This is a failure of mine to not talk about difference in preference in my examples and expect people to extrapolate and infer it out.
That’s a form of sunk cost fallacy, a collective “we’ve sacrificed too much to stop now”.
That doesn’t follow, the other books would’ve also been there without existence of this book’s poor translation. If the poor translation eats some market share, so that competing with it is less appealing, that could be a valid reason.
This is a tangent, but Sunk cost fallacy is not really a fallacy most of the time, because spending more resources beforehand really increases the chance of “success” most of the time. For more: https://gwern.net/sunk-cost
I am trying to pinpoint the concept of “A doing a mediocre job of X will force B to rationally do Y instead of X, making the progress of X worse than if A had not done anything”. The examples are just examples that hopefully helps you locate the thing I am handwaving at. I do not try to make them logically perfect because that would take too much time.
Anyways, the unwritten thing is that Bob care about having a quality headphone and a good pair of shoes equally. So given that he already has an alright headphone, he would get more utility by buying a good pairs of shoes instead. It is essentially a choice between (a) getting a $300 headphone and (b) getting a $100 headphone and a $300 pair of shoes. Of course there are some arguments about preference, utility != dollar amount or something along those lines. But (b) is the better option in my constructed example to show the point.
Let me know if I still need to explain example 2
The decision to go on with the now-easier rest-of-the-plan can be correct, it’s not the case that all plans must always be abandoned on the grounds of “sunk cost fallacy”. The fallacy is when the prior spending didn’t actually secure the rest of the current plan as the best course of action going forward. Alternatives can emerge that are better than continuing and don’t make any use of the sunk resources.
It sure can! I think we are in agreement on sunk cost fallacy. I just don’t think it applies to example 1 because there exists alternatives that can keep the sunk resources. Btw this is why my example is on the order of $100, at this price point you probably have a couple alternative things to buy to spend the money.
What matters is if those alternatives are better (and can be executed on, rather than being counterfactual). It doesn’t matter why they are better. Being better because they made use of the sunk resources (and might’ve become cheaper as a result) is no different from being better for other reasons. The sunk cost fallacy is giving additional weight to the alternatives that specifically use sunk resources, instead of simply choosing based on which alternatives are now better.
Again, seems like we are in agreement lol. I agree with what you said and I meant that, but tried to compress it into one sentence and failed to communicate.
In both cases one particular project was harmed but the sum total of projects was helped.
(I need to defend the sad and the annoying in two separate parts)
Yes, and but sometimes that is already annoying on its own (Bob is not perfectly rational and sometimes he just really want the quality headphone, but now math tells Bob that Tim gifting him that headphone means he would have to wait e.g. ~2 years before it is worth buying a new one). Of course Bob can improve his life in other ways with his saved money, but still, would be nice if you can just ask Tim to buy something else if you had known.
Sometimes increasing sum(projects) does not translate directly to increasing utility. This is more obvious in real life scenarios where actors are less rational and time is a real concept. The sad thing happens when someone with good intention but with poor skill (and you don’t know they are that bad) signing up to a time-critical project and failing/doing sub-par
Seems like the problem is that in real life people are not perfectly rational, and also they have an instinct to reciprocate when they receive a gift (at least by saying “thank you” and not throwing the gift away).
In a world where Bob is perfectly rational and Tim has zero expectations about his gift, the situation is simple. Previously, Bob’s choices were “spend $300 on good headphone”, “spend $100 on bad headphone and $200 on something else”, and “spend $300 on something else”. Tim’s action replaced the last two options with a superior alternative “use Tim’s headphone and spend $300 on something else”. Bob’s options were not made worse.
But real people are not utility maximizers. We instinctively try to choose a locally better option, and how we feel about it depends on what we perceive as the baseline. Given the choice between 10 utilons and 3 utilons, we choose 10 and feel like we just “gained 7 utilons”. Given the choice between 10 utilons and 9 utilons, we choose 10 again, but this time we feel like we just “gained 1 utilon”. Given the choice between 10 utilons and 10 utilons of a different flavor, we might feel annoyed about having to choose.
Also, if Tim expects Bob to reciprocate in a certain way, the new options are not strictly better, because “spend $300 on good headphone” got replaced by “spend $300 on good headphone, but owe Tim a favor for giving me the $100 headphone I didn’t use”.
Yes!
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/dRTj2q4n8nmv46Xok/cost-not-sacrifice?commentId=zQPw7tnLzDysRcdQv
There are infinite things to be sad and annoyed by, should you choose to focus on those. :) I’d rather focus on the world as a whole being made better in your examples.