Wet Feet AKA Mandatory $5 Pledges

[dreev]

Thanks so much – especially to @shanaqui – for hashing all this out. Beautifully said! And thanks so much to @tierrabluebird for voicing frustrations and then helping us think through everything. And for being so open-minded!

(Btw, for those who don’t know, @tierrabluebird has written a couple brilliant guest posts for us: Psychoanalyzing Beeminder and Negative Reinforcement ≠ Punishment.)

I’ll just add a few reactions as I catch up on everything here:

@shanaqui

People aren’t willing to even sign up for Beeminder if they have to pay for premium

To be fair, signup might be the hardest time to convince someone to spring for premium. It’s possible that premium-focus could work if done differently, but, as we explain in the blog post, we really needed to pick one or the other, and, for all the reasons explained there and more reasons in the meantime that Nicky’s explained above, we picked pledge-focus.

In retrospect it makes a ton of sense that that was the crux for the seeming badness of replacing $0 goals with feet-wetting mode.

@shanaqui

Danny’s offered the honey money option pretty widely – I think to everyone who has an affected $0 goal?

Yes but you do have to reply to the email we sent about that. More in another thread about bumping up existing goals.

@shanaqui

Danny graciously avoids rubbing it in my face, but he’s been absolutely right about things I thought people would hate, like commitwall

Ha, and vice versa!

@braun

the reason BM makes you start with $5 goals or whatever (vs letting you start with a higher amount) is they don’t want it to be “too” motivating

We used to think this! But our thinking has evolved. I’m working on a new blog post about this, which is part of a whole series of blog posts charting this evolution in our thinking. I’m calling it the “derailing is good-actually” series.

Blurbs for each of the posts in the series so far

1. "Bee Nice To Yourself" (2014) planted the seed for the rest of this list. It's our cofounder, Bee, pointing out that treating oneself to a derailment now and then is ok. It even helps clarify the value you have for various behaviors. Bee asks herself, for example, "how much do I want to not go for a run right now?" If it's less than $10, she'll run. If it's more, she'll pay. And if she gets up to $90 at stake and still does't want to go running, she'll re-evaluate why she's trying to get herself to run in the first place.
2. "Derailing Is Not Failing" (2019) argues that Beeminder revenue is proportiional to user-awesomeness -- that pushing yourself hard enough that you sometimes derail is great for us and great for you. You don’t know how much more you could be accomplishing unless you sometimes find your limits!
3. "Paying Is Not Punishment" (2022) is a prelude to the subsequent announcement of No-Excuses Mode and advocates for a generally less excuse-making and more results-oriented mentality with Bee minder.
4. "Derailing It Is Nailing It" (2023) turns the concept up to eleven and gives it a positive spin.
5. "Beeminder As Your Personal Pigouvian Tax" (2024) argues for a reframing from a punitive to a taxing mindset, where you treat Beeminder's stings as a behavior-shaping tax and accept that some derailments are inevitable. You can view that tax as the cost of the service Beeminder provides: nudges or rumble strips keeping you on track.

The short version is that Beeminder’s and users’ incentives are quite aligned in the common case. If you’re not the common case, like wanting to jump straight to higher pledges or keep a pledge at $0 – you can get those in the Beemium plan.

So it’s definitely not the case that ideally we’d start people at a super high pledge so they never ever derail and it’s only for money-making reasons that we make you start lower. That would be a disaster first and foremost for users (with rare exceptions).

@napkin

If you derail it’s because you missed something, and you deserve to be punished for it.

I know you’re mostly arguing the opposite perspective but for anyone just tuning in, paying is not punishment is our counterpoint. And, yeah, we have older posts like how Beeminder is a glutton for punishment and actually don’t dispute that the punishment framing works for some people.

@tierrabluebird

For me, if there’s no wiggle room or experimental room, then I play super conservatively.

Amen to this. This could also be a great argument for at least making feet-wetting mode last 30 days instead of just 7.

@braun

going to charity (or donated to a political candidate you don’t support or something)

Sorry to only pick this tiny piece to argue with for now (and thanks for the other pushback and business strategy thoughts!) but here’s our counterargument (from the early days when StickK was the big name in commitment devices) to anti-charities: Socially Efficient Commitment Devices.

@braun

main revenue will come from the type of user who is ultra rational/views it as a cost on bad behavior/recognizes the very high value of the goals they’re achieving and sees occasionally derailing as part of the deal/is motivated by high pledges but still derails sometimes etc

This part is really well said and I agree completely. Though maybe we should say “ultra rational about their irrationality”.