Exercises: The Sunk Cost of Consensus

Difficulty Guide: - ⭐ Foundational | ⭐⭐ Intermediate | ⭐⭐⭐ Challenging | ⭐⭐⭐⭐ Advanced/Research

Part A: Conceptual Understanding ⭐

A.1. Explain why institutional sunk cost is harder to overcome than individual sunk cost. What structural features make it resistant to individual recognition?

A.2. List the five components of consensus switching cost. Which do you think is most powerful? Justify your answer.

A.3. What is the "cost asymmetry" principle? Why does it ensure that wrong consensuses persist longer than the evidence warrants?

A.4. Explain the difference between healthy conservatism and pathological entrenchment using the diagnostic table from section 9.8.

A.5. Why does the chapter argue that "time is the enemy of correction"? What role does compound sunk cost play?

A.6. The chapter introduces the concept of "moral sunk cost." How does it differ from economic sunk cost, and why might it be more resistant to rational override?

Part B: Applied Analysis ⭐⭐

B.1. Map the five components of switching cost for a consensus in your own field. Be specific: identify the careers, reputations, textbooks, funding, and identities invested.

B.2. Apply the diagnostic table (healthy conservatism vs. pathological entrenchment) to a current debate in your field. Which features are present?

B.3. Compare the lobotomy case and the dietary fat case. In which case was the sunk cost higher? In which was the correction faster? What explains the difference?

B.4. The chapter argues that fields change en masse rather than one person at a time due to coordination problems. Identify a recent case of mass switching in any field. What triggered the coordinated change?

B.5. Analyze the "Active Right Now" example most relevant to your experience. Map the sunk cost components and identify what would need to change for correction to occur.

Part C: Research Design Challenges ⭐⭐–⭐⭐⭐

C.1. Design an institutional mechanism that would reduce the career component of switching cost in academia. How would it work? What unintended consequences might it create?

C.2. Propose a "paradigm transition fund" for your field — a mechanism that would support researchers and practitioners through a consensus change. What would it cover? Who would fund it?

C.3. Design a study to measure the switching cost in a specific field. What data would you collect? How would you quantify the five components?

Part D: Synthesis & Critical Thinking ⭐⭐⭐

D.1. The chapter argues that the lobotomy case is not an isolated aberration — that the same structural forces exist in every field today. Do you agree? Identify a current medical practice that might face similar sunk cost dynamics if evidence turned against it.

D.2. Is sunk cost always pathological, or can it sometimes be beneficial? (Consider: maintaining a correct consensus also involves sunk cost. The switching cost works in both directions.) When is resistance to change appropriate?

D.3. The coordination game analysis suggests that individual early movers face devastating costs while collective movers face minimal costs. Is there a way to reduce the penalty for early movers? Design a mechanism.

D.4. Apply all nine failure modes (seven entry + sunk cost) to a single case. Which combination of failure modes is maintaining the wrong consensus most powerfully?

Part M: Mixed Practice (Interleaved) ⭐⭐–⭐⭐⭐

M.1. (From Chapter 2) The authority cascade installs wrong ideas. The sunk cost keeps them. Trace both mechanisms through the peptic ulcer case, showing where each was most active.

M.2. (From Chapter 5) Survivorship bias produces biased evidence. Sunk cost prevents the field from investigating the missing evidence. How do these two mechanisms reinforce each other?

M.3. (From Chapter 7) Root metaphors create framework debt (Chapter 7). Consensus creates switching cost (Chapter 9). Compare these two forms of institutional resistance. How are they similar? Different?

M.4. (Integration) Update your Epistemic Audit with the sunk cost analysis. You now have nine diagnostic lenses. Write a 200-word summary of the most active persistence mechanisms in your field.

Part E: Research & Extension ⭐⭐⭐⭐

E.1. Read El-Hai's The Lobotomist or a summary. Write a 1,500-word analysis of the sunk cost dynamics that maintained lobotomy practice.

E.2. Investigate the opioid prescribing crisis through the sunk cost lens. Map the five components and trace how the switching cost prevented earlier correction. Write a 1,500-word case study.

Solutions

Selected solutions in appendices/answers-to-selected.md.