As I've noticed people have been trying to get some more quality posts here on Seddit, I thought I'd try to make an effort myself. This post is inspired by a popular post from a few days back: Why Oneitis Is Like An Old Car.

The post describes how it's easy to keep investing in something (or someone) you've already invested a lot of time and effort in, while it's generally more rewarding to start spending your time and effort in something different (or someone else). The top comment there links to the sunk cost fallacy on Wikipedia and while fully relevant doesn't go into it at all.

The sunk cost fallacy bascially describes how people get an emotional attachment to something after they've invested in it and will fall into making illogical decisions regarding what they've invested into. The car mentioned in the orginal post is one of those things.

The Wikipedia page also links to the sunk cost dilemma, which I think is a lot more interesting. The sunk cost dilemma describes trying to make a logical decision to either keep investing in something, or to drop it and move on. Let me explain how this is done.

Let's say you're building a hotel which is calculated to cost you $15 million, but will earn you $20 million in the long run. Now the planning has all been done, the construction has started and you've already invested $12 million, but you run into problems and find out that it will cost you another $6 million to actually finish the hotel. At this point the total cost will be $18 million, instead of your projected $15 million, and your profit will be only $2 million, rather then $5 million, but you still make a profit. At this point it's still very clear that you should go ahead with the construction, and thus you decide to do so.

However, now that you've already invested $18 million, it's still not finished due to even more problems and delays. You estimate it will take another $4 million to finish it. If you decide to do this you will no longer make a profit, but make a loss of $2 million. However, if you wouldn't invest the $4 million, everything you've already invested becomes worthless and you make a loss of $18 million.

The idea is that the $18 million you've already invested are to be fully ignored and considered 'sunk costs'. The only thing that matters is that the $4 million you're still required to invest is worth the $20 million reward at the end. So even if after spending another $4 million on the hotel it turns out you need to invest $15 million more (making the total cost $37 million) it would be worth it for a $20 million reward. As at this point you can decide to make a $15 million investment for a $20 million reward or end up with nothing. You have already lost your sunk costs.

This has the effect that any big financial project started usually is worth finishing, even if the costs end up being a -lot- higher then expected after you've invested in it. It's like a train, once it's in motion, it's really hard to stop.

We can try to apply the same logic in seduction. We're all willing to invest a certain amount of time and effort in a girl (this will differ per girl) in order to end up sleeping with her (or whatever other "reward" you're after), let's call this investment C.

Now you've been going out with this girl a couple of times and you've invested a certain amount already in her, we'll call this amount x. However x is getting pretty close to C, so you're asking yourself if it's worth investing more time into this girl. You predict the amount you're still going to have to invest in this girl (we'll call this y) is still quite a lot. You predict that x + y will be a lot more then C.

OP is saying that you should stop at this point, because it's not worth it. Whereas the sunk cost dilemma says that as long as y is less then C, completely disregarding x it is still worth it to invest more in this girl as if you've already lost x, whether you walk away, or continue investing.

The big problem when applying this to seduction I think is the fact that it is really hard to accurately predict how much you still have to invest in a girl to get the reward. If you can't accurately predict y, you don't know if y will be less then C, and if you don't know that, you can't make a decision whether or not to keep investing.

Would love to hear some more perspectives on this.