Knowing when to fold ‘em
How is it that so many other people, upon discovering the persistence of class divisions in America, how all the efforts and pretentions to a society of “equal citizens” have failed to remove those divisions, decide that the answer is to “double down” and try harder to achieve the goal, rather than (more rationally) concluding that our failure to achieve the goal despite all this time and effort and struggle indicates that the goal, however desired, is unattainable and that we should stop trying? Why is it that they conclude, based on hope without evidence, that it could somehow ever be otherwise, instead of the more obvious conclusion that such inequality is a permanent element of the human condition that must be lived with (as I learned back in grade school)? Where’s “the serenity to accept the things we cannot change”?
Is it all just sunk-costs fallacy, optimism bias, and all the other biases hardwired into the neurotypical human brain that make one irrationally persistent, and unable to identify the point where it becomes rational to cut one’s losses and just give up?
