This weekend I was supposed to be working on the structure of my new book, but I found myself struggling with docker.

I tried to reproduce it in an environment that worked three years ago, but it "didn't work".

So I tried to find out why it didn't work, and found that only about two people in the world had encountered the same problem.

(To be precise, "the number of people posting that trouble on the Internet is two.)

The best thing to do when encountering such a problem is to "give up".

This is because it consumes an enormous amount of time and has a high probability of not being resolved.

If it is your "job," you may not be able to escape. However, if it is a "pastime" or a "hobby," it is essential to "escape" as soon as possible.

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However, there is a psychological effect that interferes with this rational behavior -- it's called "sunk cost".

Sunk cost is the cost of not being able to recover an investment.

The sunk cost effect refers to the fact that the effort, money, time, etc. spent will affect future decision making -- the inability to exit while continuing to incur a deficit.

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The most common sunk costs are "exam wasters" and "qualification wasters".

"If you're an unsuccessful comedian, it's your own fault. However, "The cost of maintaining a fast breeder reactor is said to be 55 million yen per day, and the cost of decommissioning it is 150 billion yen.

Of course, they have been funded by our blood tax.

Today, I will not talk about the pros and cons of these.

However, if we were politicians, we can imagine how scary it would be to make the decision to "throw away" something that has cost us so much.

And, well, frankly speaking, researchers can be called a "sunk cost machine".

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So, even if it is in the category of "entertainment" or "hobby", my existence itself is a "sunk cost" as I lose time on weekends.