Yourself, I imagine. My meaning with the term is that every win (measured by some metric) for you is also an equal and opposite loss for yourself (measured in some other metric).

> "and hence there is an ever present opportunity cost for all decisions."

Well said. My point of my post was that often we are dismissive about these opportunity costs (I know I was, along with my other overachieving peers), and often not fully aware of their scope.

To bring some specificity to vague concepts: I didn't put the time in to really socialize, connect, and date during high school. I did better at it during college, but to be perfectly honest I still put too much time towards achievements that don't in the end make me happier. I'm still recovering from the effects of that now; IMHO it's easy for high-performers (in the scholastic sense) to be blindsided by this later on. I've had more than one depressing/uncomfortable conversation where the true cost of this sacrifice dawns upon a high-performer. I've had this realization myself.

If your metrics are real metrics, and actually have some bearing on utility/happiness, that can't be true.

The trivial counterexample is a situation where you're attempting to get out of a burning building. No metric I personally would use would give the option of dying in a fire equal weight to the opportunity cost of the rest of your life.

And there are countless lesser examples where there's a "losing" choice and a "winning" choice when we're going across the tree of all possible life outcomes.