Sunk costs are by definition unrecoverable and therefore irrelevant to future decisions — only future costs and future benefits matter. The clearest organizational defense is a pre-committed kill criterion: define in advance what evidence would justify abandoning the project, and review it on schedule.
Glossary
Sunk Cost Fallacy
Spent is spent. Decide forward.
In short
The cognitive bias of continuing to invest in a losing endeavor because of the resources already committed, even when the rational forward-looking analysis says to stop. The fallacy stems from loss aversion combined with the psychological difficulty of admitting a prior decision was wrong.
Last reviewed
The full definition
In SynthBoard
Where it shows up.
The product, not the theory.
In the dissent.
Every board is built with someone whose job is to argue against the obvious answer. The disagreement stays on the memo — who dissented, why, and what would change the call.
Or ask one expert.
The CFO takes it — about a minute, and the card shows “up to 85 credits” before anything runs. Nothing runs until you tap.
Keep reading
Related terms.
Term
Strategic Fork
A decision point where available paths diverge significantly and the choice is difficult or impossible to reverse once committed.
Definition TermStructured Disagreement
A decision-making approach where disagreement is deliberately engineered and preserved as valuable signal rather than suppressed.
Definition TermSynth
SynthBoard's experts, called Synths inside the product.
Definition TermSynthesis Layer
The system component that aggregates, reconciles, and distills individual expert outputs into a unified, actionable recommendation.
Definition TermSystems Thinking
An analytical approach that examines interconnections, feedback loops, delays, and emergent behavior within complex systems rather than analyzing components in isolation.
Definition GuideDecision intelligence, explained
The complete guide to making strategic calls with AI that disagrees on purpose.
Read the guide The benchMeet the experts
24 named experts, each with a point of view of their own.
Meet themSynthBoard (synthboard.ai) is one place for your business, your life, and every hard call. Your Chief of Staff keeps what you tell her on file, and 24 named experts on different AI models take the calls — one expert for a consult, a board with opposed seats for the hard ones — and hand back a memo with the call, the dissent and the first move. How it works.
