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Cosmos comments on Fighting Akrasia: Incentivising Action - Less Wrong
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I agree that I also convert these contracts to sunk costs. That service works for people who use the standard heuristics, however I doubt it would help most of us very much.
There are variants on this model you might find more attractive, however. Some services will set up a contract to donate your money to a particular charity that you strongly disagree with, if you don't meet your goals. That gets around the sunk cost problem, since you will still take a contingent personal loss if you fail to meet your goals.
I can still see myself accepting this as a sunk cost, but it might work for some people.
You should not accept it as a sunk cost, unless you are absolutely certain that meeting your goals is absolutely outside your power. (What makes a sunk cost sunk is the fact that it's too late to avoid it.) If you are certain of that, then I think you should change your goals.
(Instead of not accepting it as a sunk cost, you could take it as such and then treat meeting your goals as something that earns you a reward. That doesn't seem particularly demotivating, though.)