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Cosmos comments on Fighting Akrasia: Incentivising Action - Less Wrong
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Thanks for the link. I think this service is a step in the right direction, but I find I have the following problem with services with this model. When I make the commitment and set the penalties, I then tend to immediately convert the penalties I will pay into a sunk cost, so that I already account for losing that amount (this may just be the good budgeter in me, but it defeats these sorts of systems). How might we change the structure of such a system to at least prevent this type of self defeat?
Some ideas that come to my mind are:
1) Pay for meeting goals, funded by ad revenue or subscriptions to a related service (such as a discussion forum)
2) Randomly fluctuating penalties (although this will in practice require setting an acceptable range, and then you can just budget for the max)
3) Increasing penalties (especially if they increase exponentially; after I pay $1024 for not meeting the goal, then I might do something about it so I don't pay $2048 the next time)
Any other ideas on how we might modify such a system to be more successful?
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.)