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I am looking for the term used to describe this scenario. It's similar to the cost sunk fallacy -I think-.

Let's say you have a bunch of teams going through some pain every day. There is a solution, which we will call "big fix", in the works but it will take time to finish. In the meantime, there is a person that has a solution for only one of the teams. Let's call this other solution a "hot fix".

What term can be use to describe the fact that decision-makers don't want to implement the hot fix because it only solves the problem for 1 team. Note:

  • They are ignoring the fact that money is being lost while waiting for the big fix
  • The big fix may be delayed so in a way they are putting all eggs in one basked

I said it sounds similar to the sunk cost fallacy because they are hesitant to do a hot fix since they have committed 100% to the big fix but note that doing the hot fix does not mean abandoning the current strategy.

fingia
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First of all the sunk cost fallacy isn't so much a fallacy to begin with but just a bias. Which makes that more about psychology and economics than about philosophy.

Also whether the decision is wrong can usually only be confirmed after the fact, so it's rather about strategies and heuristics than about hard and fast rules where fallacies would apply.

Like whether it makes sense to continue investing or abandoning a project depends on the project. Like if you're only doing it to make money then you just calculate expected returns and expected loses and look whether the result is positive or negative. Either of which could be inflated or deflated by biases so yeah that's all just heuristics and a rule of thumb. But if the result of the project is crucial, idk a water purifier in a fallout scenario then it's almost irrelevant what the costs are as long as it solves the problem.

And in that situation. Well it depends on the quality of the big fix and hot fix. Like if the big fix is standardized, tested, calculated and whatnot and supposed to yield a 20% benefit, while the hot fix yields a 10% benefit but breaks some or all of the standardization that lets the big fix achieve it's 20% benefit. Then you'd not do the hot fix but rather wait for the big fix. If the systems are modular and independent and it really doesn't matter who does what, then the situation would be different. But either way it's not a fallacy it's a heuristic. And whether it makes sense depends on the situation that you're dealing with.

Also keep in mind that optimization is not neutral, there are multiple parameters by which you can optimize a system and there are usually multiple outputs that you may want or not want to optimize. So you might want to optimize your workload while management might want to optimize for money. And these two can at times be mutually exclusive.

haxor789
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This seems to be unrelated to the “sunk cost” fallacy. They seem to plan a project X under the assumption that it will benefit the company obviously. And you think that first doing a smaller project Y will bring some benefits quickly, and Y followed by X would be better.

If the decision is “we decided X, so we don’t look at anything else may be wrong. However, a fallacy isn’t “doing something wrong” but “following incorrect rules”. For example the “sunk cost fallacy” uses the incorrect rule “if you spent lots of money on X, then you need to spend more to make X a success” which is sometimes wrong.

Here I see no fallacy. The company may have only limited capacity for planning projects. Or only limited capacity to enact projects. The may calculate costs and benefits incorrectly which is a mistake but not a fallacy. The decision may be whatever the CEOs nephew decided - that would be nepotism, and stupid, but not a fallacy.

gnasher729
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