As a child of the 90s, I was always fascinated by the biggest, fastest, and greatest technological developments of the modern age. Skyscrapers, fast sports cars, mammoth tankers – I couldn’t get enough. Among all these technologies I had a special favourite: the Concorde.
Text by Ps. Tom Meijer
Imagine this: you fly from London to New York in 3.5 hours, at an unbelievable speed of 2,180 kilometres an hour and a cruising height of 18,3000 metres. At that height, you can see the curvature of the Earth. Even more impressive, because of the time difference you arrive in New York before you left London. In short, this is a very special piece of technology.
Off the Ground
The Concorde came out of a cooperation between France and the UK. Both governments pledged huge sums of money– both literally and figuratively – just to get the project off the ground. From the beginning, though, the members of the project team had many qualms. Would it ever be a profitable passenger service? The potential damage the plane could do to the environment was also a concern.
The various decision-makers had heard all these concerns long before the first flight, but they decided to continue with the project anyway. After all, they had come so far! It would be a shame to give up now, they thought. In 2003, after twenty-eight years in service, and amidst rising fuel prices, a plane crash outside Paris, and the September 11 terror attacks, both countries did eventually pull the plug. By that point, they had lost more than £1.3 billion on the project.
It would have saved French and British taxpayers a lot of money if the people in charge had only listened to the original concerns, and stopped the project sooner.
Fallacy
This costly cognitive error has become so famous that it has a sophism named after it. People talk about ‘the Concorde fallacy’ or, in more neutral terms, ‘the sunk-cost fallacy’. It describes how, once a person has invested a lot of time or money into something, they generally have a hard time letting go of it. This can apply to very simple things, like the impulse to finish watching a lousy film even though you should have stopped and gone looking for another one halfway through. Or an all-you-can-eat buffet, where you eat too much because otherwise you feel like you haven’t gotten your money’s worth. In this last case we often regret our decision within a couple of hours.
We can also find the Concorde fallacy at work in some of the serious choices we face, though. Switching degrees or careers can be a dramatic event, but sometimes we make it even more difficult by beating ourselves up about all the time and energy we wasted on the old path. If you think about it, the only time you can really lose is in the future. The past is in the past!
You may also find yourself in a friendship, a working relationship, or a romantic relationship that isn’t good for you. Sometimes letting go is still difficult, because all the time you have spent together feels like a loss. Most of us don’t like to give up after we’ve come so far. It hurts either way. These feelings are only human, and aren’t something you should be ashamed of. After all, even the brilliant, educated people on the Concorde project fell for them.
Not Good or Bad
In the Bible, we also encounter someone faced with this kind of choice. Amaziah is one of the kings of Judah that we don’t often read or hear about. The Bible has the following to say about him: ‘He did what was right in the sight of the Lord, yet not with a true heart’ (2 Chronicles 25:2). He wasn’t all bad, like some of his ancestors and descendants, but he wasn’t the greatest role model.
In Amaziah’s time, the kingdom of Judah was at war with her neighbours. In 2 Chronicles 24 we read that the army of Aram had just dealt a great blow to the kingdom. Amaziah wasn’t about to let that happen again. He wanted to make his mark, and gathered a massive army. Altogether he had ‘three hundred thousand picked troops fit for war, able to handle spear and shield’ (2 Chronicles 25:5).
Delusions of Grandeur
This army was impressive, but Amaziah suffered from delusions of grandeur, and thought it would be a good idea to hire an extra 100,000 men to make it even stronger. He went looking for these men among his northern neighbours in Israel, and when he found them, he paid a hundred silver talents for their services. In today’s terms, that comes to around €55 million. That is a major investment, though compared to the defence budget of even a tiny country like the Netherlands it is a relatively small sum. If that price ensured freedom and peace for your country, you might even call it a bargain.
The king of Judah must have been pretty happy with his 400,000-man army. Armies don’t get much larger than that in the Bible – but God wasn’t too pleased about it! He couldn’t accept that Amaziah had recruited Israelites from the northern tribes to his army, because Amaziah’s men didn’t worship the Lord as their only God. A prophet came to Amaziah to tell him that he would have to let these 100,000 men go. Otherwise God would withdraw his blessing from the entire army.
Crucial Decisions
Now Amaziah was faced with a crucial decision. It was also a simple one. He had two options: release the 100,000 men from their contract and lose the €55 million he had invested, or enter the battlefield without God’s blessing, which would probably have meant losing. The Concorde fallacy rears its head again. Back then there was no such thing as a money back guarantee, so either way the king had lost his €55 million. But if Amaziah had set out with 400,000 men instead of 300,000, he would likely have lost everything!
In the end Amaziah decided to take the prophet’s advice. By doing so he won the important battle that followed, and gave the kingdom of Judah a temporary peace. Amaziah chose to lose his investment in order to gain God’s blessing.
Unfortunately, this same king fell into idolatry shortly thereafter. He made one wise decision, but was ultimately not the wisest of kings.
Philosophy and Faith
You may well be asking yourself what all this philosophical fallacy mumbo-jumbo has to do with your faith. You may not recognise yourself at all in the examples I have given. Either way, I am convinced that faith requires both head and heart. Unfortunately, our hearts and out heads don’t always agree with each other. In cases like these it’s good to stop and think about the underlying reasons for our conflict. In Romans 12:2 Paul tells us to renew our minds. I believe that’s an ongoing process.
As human beings, it’s good to remind ourselves that we all have cognitive biases. The biases that cause us to make bad decisions in our daily lives can also influence our walk with God. I’d like to see us all become more aware of the choices we make, and become better stewards of our time and money. In any case, it’s reassuring to know that even losing, giving up, or letting go can sometimes be the best things to do. It may sound like a contradiction, and it may even feel a bit wrong in the moment, but sometimes a loss is actually a gain.
Ditching Cognitive Bias
Want to learn more about cognitive bias? Listen to the internet podcast ‘You Are Not So Smart’.
Ps. Tom Meijer is the pastor of Alphen DC, Gouda and Rotterdam: Het Kompas.
