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RichardChappell comments on Akrasia, hyperbolic discounting, and picoeconomics - Less Wrong
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No, akrasia is acting against your better judgment. This comes apart from imprudence in both directions: (i) someone may be non-akratically imprudent, if they whole-heartedly endorse being biased towards the near; (ii) we may be akratic by failing to act according to other norms (besides prudence) that we reflectively endorse, e.g. morality.
In that case Ainslie has somewhat turned the word to his own ends. Is there a better word for what he's talking about?
I don't criticise your definition for not cleaving at the joins because it absolutely seems plausible to me that there could be a unified theory of how we are about morality and how we are about our own long-term interests; the distinction between the two is scarcely made in much of what people say.
Inter-temporal conflict?
(Part of the problem with misusing language is that it makes it unclear exactly what one has in mind. I assume Ainslie has a broader target than mere imprudence: foreseeable moral failures may provide similar reasons for precommitment, regret, etc. So perhaps he really does mean general akrasia, despite the misleading definition. But does he also take his topic to include 'murder pills' and ordinary cases of [foreseeable] changes to our ultimate values? Or does he restrict himself solely to cases of intertemporal "conflict" involving akrasia -- i.e. whereby both 'selves' share the same ultimate values, and it's simply a matter of helping them "follow through" on these?)
His topic is specifically those changes of mind that we can anticipate because of hyperbolic discounting.
Okay, that sounds like 'imprudence', then.