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The What-the-Hell Effect
Richard Rost 
           
18 days ago
Yes, that's the actual term for it. In behavioral psychology, the what-the-hell effect describes what happens when you slip up on a goal, and instead of correcting course, you just give up entirely. You figure, "Well, I already messed up... what the hell, I might as well go all in."

It's common in dieting. You're trying to eat clean, but the wife orders pizza. You weren't planning to eat any, but you grab a slice. Then your brain says, "Well, I already blew it. Might as well have six slices, and maybe a donut, and maybe ice cream for dessert, too."

Same thing with working out. You miss a day at the gym, and instead of just picking back up tomorrow, you say, "Well, this week's already ruined. I'll restart next week. Or next month. Or maybe after the holidays."

It's similar to the Sunk Cost Fallacy in that you're continuing in the wrong direction, but the logic is reversed. With sunk cost, you keep going because you've invested too much already. With the what-the-hell effect, you keep going because you already broke the rules, so who cares anymore?

I've been guilty of this one. For years, I never commented my VBA code. Nothing. Not one. I figured, well, I've already written thousands of lines without comments and everything works fine, so what's the point of starting now? What the hell. Spoiler: future me was not amused.

I also used to never name my buttons properly. I figured why bother? Then Alex yelled at me. Now I name my buttons out of fear. :)

Here's another common one. Someone says, "I've never backed up my data, and I've never had a hard drive crash, so why should I start now?" Then one day, the drive fails. They lose everything. What the hell indeed.

A perfect Star Trek example of the what-the-hell effect comes from The First Duty. Wesley Crusher and his fellow cadets are involved in a training accident at Starfleet Academy that results in the death of a classmate. Instead of coming clean, they double down on a lie to cover up the maneuver that caused the crash. It starts as a single bad decision, but because they already crossed the line, they feel like they have to keep going with it. The cover-up becomes bigger than the incident itself. It's a classic what-the-hell spiral: one rule broken, so now all bets are off. Wesley eventually does the right thing, but not before the damage is done.*

You see the same effect in real life, too. Take the Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky scandal. The affair itself, while a personal and political mistake, probably wouldn't have led to impeachment on its own. But once he chose to lie about it under oath, everything escalated. That's the what-the-hell effect in action: "Well, I already messed up, might as well cover it up." The cover-up ended up being far worse than the original offense, and it all stemmed from that one decision to keep digging after the hole was already too deep.

You can actually see both of these fallacies play out at the poker table. The sunk cost fallacy shows up when a player has already dumped a bunch of chips into the pot and says, "Well, I've come this far, I can't fold now." But of course, the amount you've already bet shouldn't matter. The smart move is based on the odds and the situation in front of you, not what you've already put in. Still, that emotional investment can make it hard to walk away from a losing hand.

The what-the-hell effect is more emotional. A player makes a bad call or gets caught bluffing, and instead of resetting and playing smart, they spiral. "I already blew my stack, what the hell... might as well go all in with this 2/7 offsuit garbage and hope for the best." It's the poker version of eating the whole pizza because you already had one slice. One bad decision turns into several, not because it's smart, but because pride and frustration take the wheel.

Yeah, I used to play a little poker back in the day. I've never been much of a gambler, but I love hold'em poker.

The what-the-hell effect is a trap. One slip doesn't mean you've failed. It means you're human. The best thing you can do is stop the spiral. One slice of pizza doesn't ruin your week. One missed workout doesn't erase your gains. One uncommented module doesn't mean you should abandon documentation forever. Don't turn a bump in the road into a ditch. Pause, reset, and move forward. No "what the hell" required.

LLAP  
RR  

* And is it just me, or does that cadet squad leader look familiar? Locarno was his name in the episode. He looks suspiciously like Tom Paris. LOL. And yes, I know - it's the same actor. For a while, I actually thought maybe Voyager just retconned him. Like maybe Locarno used a fake name at the Academy so nobody would know his dad was an admiral. Sounds plausible, right? But nope. Turns out, it was a money thing. If the Voyager writers had used the actual Locarno character, then the writers of that TNG episode would have gotten paid royalties for every single Voyager episode Paris was in (so... all of them). And apparently Paramount wasn't into sharing. So they hit Ctrl+F, replaced "Locarno" with "Paris," adjusted the attitude slider slightly, and bam - new character, same haircut.
Richard Rost OP  @Reply  
           
18 days ago

Thomas Gonder  @Reply  
       
18 days ago
I never noticed the Locarno and Paris thing. But then again, I watched them months apart and don't rewatch older shows. Nor pay that close attention.
I figured someday, somewhere, someone was going to take the ADS and track every ST show, season, episode, character and actor and cross reference them all. Then I could just fire up the db and confirm with a photo what you said here. I figured that someone was going to be you Mr. Richard R., since you have soooo much free time for these kinds of things. Now, if we could get a BE to work over the Internet, we could parse out the project to a few Trekkies here... The FE in ver 1_24 should handle it, and with GitHub...?  Well at least we would all learn what the heck it is. Wow, this is starting to sound like its own Access collaboration series on 599CD.com! We would have to start where it all began...with Kirk.
Richard Rost OP  @Reply  
           
17 days ago
Haha. You can make a BE work over the internet. It's called SQL Server. Lol
Thomas Gonder  @Reply  
       
17 days ago
Richard Let's do it!
Richard Rost OP  @Reply  
           
16 days ago
Haha. There's no "let's." I don't do. I just teach. LOL.
Thomas Gonder  @Reply  
       
16 days ago
Here's a teaching moment! Create a new thread under Captains Log and I'll start the questions to understand the requirements with consensus, since I'm not officially a "Trekkie". I'll start with an empty ADS and we'll go from there. We'll see how dedicated Trekkies are that come to 599CD.com. Each person can add their favorite characters and episodes.

Thomas Gonder  @Reply  
       
16 days ago
Here, I'll start an example question. Are the Star Trek shows to be classified as "real" or "fictional". Yes they are real shows. In a library, they would go in the Fiction Section. Tom Paris likes to watch old shows, that are real, on his vintage TV. If it's not a documentary, is that show fictional too? Are the actors the only "real" things? Earth is real. Star Fleet Academy isn't. Vulcan isn't. Etc.
Michael Olgren  @Reply  
     
9 days ago
Thomas I actually am that Trekkie... Months ago I got some pointers from Richard, created the db, and started watching in order. I have a chronological list (by airdate) of all the Star Trek movies, TV shows, etc. I am collecting "rituals" (e.g. red shirt death, Vulcan nerve pinch), characters, ships, planets, and more. It's a bucket list project that will probably take more years than I have left!
Michael Olgren  @Reply  
     
9 days ago

Thomas Gonder  @Reply  
       
9 days ago
Michael Okey, that's way more ambitious than I envisioned. While doing some research, I found a site Fandom, that seems up this alley, but I'm not sure if they go into your level of detail.
Are all the detail records based on normalized tables?
Are you using a sub form that changes fields? (I'm just starting on one of those.)
If you're sharing, I'd like to see the db.
I've only seen the entire TNG show. The TOS I probably saw as a kid, but I'm sure I missed a few episodes.
Michael Olgren  @Reply  
     
9 days ago
Yes, that's a subform that changes its source when the label is clicked (VBA). Richard has a lesson on it somewhere. I'm happy to share for personal use but I'm GitHub ignorant so you'd have to walk me through a mechanism.
Michael Olgren  @Reply  
     
9 days ago
Maybe this is enough to get you started; one of the label Click events:
Private Sub lblPlace_Click()
  EpisodeCharF.SourceObject = "EpisodePlaceF"
  lblCharacter.SpecialEffect = 1
  lblItem.SpecialEffect = 1
  lblMonster.SpecialEffect = 1
  lblPlace.SpecialEffect = 2
  lblRace.SpecialEffect = 1
  lblRitual.SpecialEffect = 1
  lblShip.SpecialEffect = 1
  lblWriter.SpecialEffect = 1
End Sub
Richard Rost OP  @Reply  
           
9 days ago
I love everything about this. :)
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