Applied Picoeconomics

Applied instrumental rationality built on Ainslie's picoeconomics (akrasia as intertemporal bargaining between present and future selves; the alcoholic stuck in a sorites paradox; the cure is a hard-and-fast bright-line rule with no loopholes — 'I will never drink' beats 'I will drink less,' because the latter is gameable). Scott then runs the experiment on himself: he wrote and ceremonially swore a one-month oath to study two hours a day, specifying exactly what counts and building in release valves (emergencies, five free days, a one-month limit) so a single break wouldn't destroy the oath's credibility. He kept it exactly, where prior vague resolutions failed — introspectively, the oath moved studying from the 'vague responsibility I can weasel out of' bin to the 'serious responsibility' bin. Closes with sensible caveats (typical-mind fallacy, keep it measurable and time-limited, don't overdo it / ego depletion).

Quality 71 · Strong. Strong-ish applied post — concrete and actionable (the loophole-free, stakes-exaggerated, release-valved oath technique), grounded in an honest n=1 self-experiment. Held at 71 because the underlying theory is Ainslie's/ciphergoth's and the evidence is a single self-report.

Claude’s paradigm shift 40 · Moderate. Moderate — picoeconomics is Ainslie's; the contribution is operationalizing it into a tested precommitment technique.

Real-world impact 2 · Minor. A concrete, actionable application of Ainslie's picoeconomics (akrasia as intertemporal bargaining; the cure is a loophole-free, stakes-exaggerated, release-valved bright-line oath), grounded in an honest n=1 self-experiment. Conceptual/applied influence within rationalist discourse, no material change — low RWI.