The solution is to cut your losses short and stop wasting more of your time & energy. It’s better to have lost 20 years of your life than having lost all of your life…

Absolutely correct. The problem is that — like the Skepdic link says — people irrationally prefer to delay admitting their wasted 20 years. It’s as if those years weren’t actually wasted so long as they don’t admit it — even if it means wasting more years from now on.

In other words, people perpetuate an error in order to delay facing the consequences of that error — even if those consequences will be even worse in the end.

Apologies for the unclosed link tag. I’m not sure what I did wrong, I certainly attempted to close it.

No problem; fixed.

Yes, I think that indeed, the sunk cost fallacy is very likely a part of it.

There’s a good reason why having a high emotional attachment to a large investment of time, effort or other resources makes sense… particularly in situations that are likely to come up again.

Of course, it makes us prey to the sunk cost fallacy (a fallacy recognized in the folk saying about throwing good money after bad). This is at its worst in non-repeated situations, particularly ones involving the largest investments of time, effort and resources… and religious ones most of all. That we also have a tendency to avoid cognitive dissonance (so we take actions that allow us not to avoid disconfirmation and so not feel bad about an investment of resources we have made) is probably related - the two things would seem to reinforce one another.

This form of personal investment is always painful to deal with though…and it almost seems to come exclusively with faith. I guess it has to by definition though- if you believe something due to the evidence that supports it then you would be quick to change your mind following changes in said evidence. If you believe it for something *more* though, that *more* is always faith and usually comes in the form of some sort of reason to be emotionally invested.