# Commitment contracts - Yes, but between who?

**URL:** <https://forum.beeminder.com/t/commitment-contracts-yes-but-between-who/7079>\
**Category:** Akrasia\
**Created:** [August 1, 2020, 7:08am UTC](https://forum.beeminder.com/t/commitment-contracts-yes-but-between-who/7079 "2020-08-01T07:08:24Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 17

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**Author:** ![matti](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/flex019/user_avatar/forum.beeminder.com/matti/32/2506_2.png) [@matti](https://forum.beeminder.com/u/matti)\
**Post date:** [August 5, 2020, 12:35pm UTC](https://forum.beeminder.com/t/commitment-contracts-yes-but-between-who/7079/17 "2020-08-05T12:35:21Z")

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@grayson I appreciate a lot your consistently insightful comments. I especially appreciate your (and all the other commenter’s) commitment to be empathetic in your answers. It’s not a simple matter to discuss these things, while keeping the other side in mind.

> [@grayson](#):
>
> what this is actually asking for

I can live with beeminder as is. But I want to be able to use it as I see fit. I want to be in power over my own usage as much as plausibility permits.

> [@grayson](#):
>
> I think what confuses me is that this sounds like you’re more, or mostly, interested in Beeminder’s use as a self-quantization tool, to track past choices, actions, etc. without holding yourself to them.

Interesting that it sounds that way. I use beeminder much more as a commitment device, though. I guess, that allowing myself to very rarely skip a seven day wait if it makes sense to me and then add to that my impassioned arguments for allowing this must make it look different. My point really just ist: I’m committed to use this tool as prescribed by Beeminder itself, but sometimes I know better for myself (aside: you might be interested to check out a thread in which I try to argue for the [relative harmlessness of fake data](https://forum.beeminder.com/t/how-important-are-accurate-graphs-is-there-a-case-to-be-made-for-fake-data/5544)). 😉

> [@grayson](#):
>
> Agree! As suggested above:

Hehe. Nice try. My workaround for this particular situation was to ask support to do the thing that I couldn’t directly. I want the stings, I want pledges and I want an often times conservative but still motivating road slope. I know you say that this would be asking for an exception to the rules. Again: Exception from whose rules? Mine? Beeminder’s? If it’s the latter we discussed this already: I have never accepted the premise of a hard horizon. So it cannot be my rules which are circumvented here. But since I’m in power… well, you know the rest. 🙂

I will say that I like your inventive idea of zero-slope goals. I might have to try those out in an appropriate context.

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