[RainManDetroit]

No one manages his money as carefully as his own. If you were as clear and succinct in your description of the situation to stakeholders as you just made plain here, and they were willing to pay for the chance of success or the effort toward success, the project should have gone forward.

[kornish]

He made it clear, though, that it wasn't just his stakeholders' money he was worried about - it was investing his own valuable time and energy in a problem he believed to be fundamentally unconquerable. That, to me, is a far better reason to not go forward.