Cognitive biases #1: The Sunk Cost Glacier
What do a Himalayan glacier, a toxic job, and a piece of pottery have in common?
In the middle of the Asian continent, tucked in a mare’s nest of disputed borders between northern India, northeastern Pakistan, and southwestern China, lies a 47-mile–long stretch of ice called the Siachen Glacier.
Up to 19,000 feet above sea level, the glacier is unpopulated, has no identified natural resources, gets 35 feet of snow a year, has precious few roads leading to it, and faces temperatures as low as –58º Fahrenheit.
People have been fighting over it for almost seventy years.
It all started in 1947, when Britain decided to split India and Pakistan from each other. (Side note: Does every one of today’s geopolitical conflicts trace back to Britain’s 1940s backroom border-drawing spree?)
The borders that the Brits drew ended at particular point in the north called, opaquely, NJ9842. After NJ9842, the only instructions they gave were that the partition line would continue “thence north to the glaciers.” But where? All the way through the glaciers? Up to the glaciers? To somewhere in their midpoint? That was left to interpretation.
