Yep, that’s a future cost of the decision to not go to the concert, not a sunken cost like the cost of the ticket. It’s not relevant to the discussion of sunken costs.

The point is the same cost can be sunken and future cost too. It's not binary, and your implied false dichotomy (either a future cost or a sunken cost) is wrong

I have implied no false dichotomy. I haven't said one must accept either or. I've said simply one can account for the costs implied by the OP without rejecting the sunk cost falacy.

If it helps you to think in sunk costs that's probably fine. I don't care. My point was purely that one can incorporate the kinds of concerns the OP was proposing without rejecting the "sunk cost falacy".

The dichotomy does seem to apply perfectly well. The cost of the ticket is sunken. The social cost of skipping the concert is not.

imagine every instant in your life is an infinitesimally small point on a timeline (or every millisecond if something concrete is easier). the present is t0.

an event occurs (buy ticket) at tX. according to "ignore sunk costs", at tX+delta you should annihilate all influence from any event at tX or before. therefore that you have a concert ticket is, in a weird way, almost immaterial. it enables a future decision (to "freely" go to a concert, as you would any other activity) but, my interpretation is that you only have present and future after every instant moment.

you may say: well what about eliminating future opportunities? e.g. i spent my last $250 on concert ticket so can't go to hawaii. that is in part of a matrix i would call "regret" or counterfactuals (not sure if there's an economic/scientific term here), which involves thinking about how past decisions affected future ones.

I think you're conflating what the paper author calls "binding" and "betting" -- "binding-type" decisions (like the one in the concert example) seem to be candidates for honoring sunken costs. Betting, on the other hand, does not.

No. I understand exactly what the author means. The paper is quite simple and clear. I just think it's a meaningless distinction. Rather than try to create a two tiered decision making process where some decisions should include sunk costs and others shouldn't, you should have a single tiered system that includes social costs.

You don't need to think in sunk cost terms to value plausible deniability. You should view losing credibility with your superiors and peers as a current cost that runs into the future.

If for example you suddenly realize your thesis paper is junk and are faced with decision to push forward or start anew it's not sunk cost to consider that your academic superiors might see this as flailing about and that you should count that as a cost of changing direction. That's just a social cost and not a time or materials cost.

That's being victim of your peers falling for the sunk cost fallacy

No. It's realizing your peers can induce a cost to you in the future whether they are acting from a rational PoV or not and incorporating that cost to your calculation.