Mind · Strategy

SunkCostIgnore

Rationality over historical investment

Definition

Mechanism

Fresh Slate Evaluation: When deciding whether to continue, ask: "If I were starting fresh today with current resources, would I begin this project?" Past investment is irrelevant to future value. Only future costs and benefits matter. Kill zombies early. Utilizes OpportunityCost.

Preconditions

  1. Decision point
  2. History of investment

Postconditions

  1. Rational choice made

Invariants

  1. The Decision is based only on future utility.

Risks

Failure modes

  1. Loss Aversion {{loop}}

    The agent re-frames stopping as a loss rather than a saving, preventing the fresh slate evaluation.

Relationships

Builds on

References

Infrastructure

Decision

Irrevocable selection from a set of options

Infrastructure

Loop

Repeated execution cycle

Used by

References

MarginalValueRule

Deepen only while expected improvement plus an exploration credit, divided by incremental cost, exceeds a domain threshold

Reference

Identity

Ref
SunkCostIgnore#c2e5
Sema ID
sema:SunkCostIgnore#mh:SHA-256:c2e5392f7eee86aa652633c415404ce13a5f83f4e239ad02fd230c75b3c2313c
Ring
2
Tier
1
Updated
2026-11-11
Supersedes
  • sema:SunkCostIgnore#mh:SHA-256:4dc35c44a5267415e5ddb5e07a802229242be890db74b697881178da91ccad8f
  • sema:SunkCostIgnore#mh:SHA-256:aa8559972a65a167ab809cf25348a534b82d3be52fef52cad6e2ab266fb1b4d3