Pre-commit to abandonment conditions before emotional…
Pre-commit to abandonment conditions before emotional investment makes rational exit decisions impossible.
Why This Is a Principle
This derives from escalation of commitment (Humans escalate commitment to failing courses of action…), loss aversion (Losses loom larger than equivalent gains in human…), and cognitive dissonance (Cognitive Dissonance Drives Information Avoidance). It prescribes when to set criteria (before emotional load) to counteract these systematic biases. It's actionable and general enough to apply across contexts.
Source Lessons
Kill criteria
Define in advance what evidence would cause you to abandon a course of action.
Agent retirement criteria
Define clear criteria for when an agent should be retired rather than maintained. Without explicit retirement criteria set in advance, you will hold onto agents long past the point where they serve you — because the sunk cost of building them, the identity you attached to them, and the absence of a forcing function all conspire to keep dead agents on life support.