Hang on. I’m a “group” of sapients (a group of one, but a group). Everyone else is another group. Are you saying that I will never be convinced, or should never be convinced, by moral philosophy written by someone else?
And why call the assertions arbitrary? The humans in the story seem to share axioms like “pain is bad, cet par” with the Martians. Neither side is Clippy here.
Can I ask a silly question? My understanding of your situation is that you want to get your work done, but sometimes you don’t have the willpower, so you use your M&M system for motivation. But then you are faced with the possibility of just eating a bunch of M&M’s without doing anything. And there is no meta-M&M system to motivate you to keep from eating M&M’s. So I don’t see how this can actually help you. Empirically, it clearly does, but I have trouble understanding how. Why is it easier to keep from eating M&M’s “on your own” and leverage that ability to motivate you to do work, than it is to keep doing work “on your own” in the first place?
If I have just ruined the effect, I sincerely apologize...