Politics, making bad choices with votes, is mainly what I have in mind…but it’s not limited to that. You see it with anything that requires a choice and a commitment of money, time, effort, etc. By and large people don’t want to admit I made a bad choice and it’s time to cut my losses.
Instead there is lots of rationalizing going on, and I think this leads people down paths they otherwise would not have gone, rinse repeat as things worsen. Small concessions to negative consequences build over time, and along the way the initial bad choices may be forgotten. Plenty of people can be swimming in the messes they made without ever a thought of changing their views.
It never helps to point out the degree to which a person has compromised themselves. That has to be done from within, and that’s exactly what is missing.
I think all of this is a huge problem in the world today. But damned if I know what to do about it.
In general, there’s the sunk cost fallacy. But I think there’s an additional, related component in politics. Trump in particular but many politicians (and whatever Elon Musk is) are conmen and not particularly smart. They’re just charismatic — I don’t personally get Trump or Musk’s charisma but apparently a lot of people do. (And their tweets alone are evidence enough to prove they aren’t clever.)
And so any time Trump or Musk or whomever does something completely idiotic, supporters compensate by telling themselves it’s all 12 dimensional chess and they’re actually brilliant. It’s just too embarrassing for them to admit they were conned by a fool. So, they double down to compensate. But ultimately, most conmen aren’t smart. That’s why they’re conmen.