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Overcoming Bias Commenter's avatar

I'm more likely to simply buy a new hard drive. At this point search technology is good enough (and my computer skills are high enough) to allow me to retrieve pretty much whatever I want from my hard drive with little effort. However, it still takes me a fair amount of work to go through a directory tree and clear out the files that aren't relevant anymore. As hard drive costs have plummeted in recent years, I find that the monetary cost of a new hard drive is less than the opportunity cost of cleaning out the existing drive.

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Overcoming Bias Commenter's avatar

For consistency, should we be as committed to eliminating the endowment bias in interpersonal relationships as in our treatment of objects? Is there really no value to our inclination to hold on to people because they are "ours"? If we could, should we try to treat all people, already-ours and not-yet-ours, as equally valuable, all other things being equal? If so, is the quest of seeking out and maintaining committed relationships misguided? And if it isn't, and if the endowment bias with respect to people is actually useful, should we then "practice" it by allowing it to remain in other areas in our life?

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