I generally watch videos I enjoy while doing physical therapy exercises. I didn’t conceptualize it as hiding the “reward” from myself as an incentive for exercising; I conceptualize it as making the rather boring, sometimes aversive activity less salient by focusing my attention on something else.
As an example, I find it much easier to hold a plank when I’m focused on the video I’m watching than when I’m just starting at the timer counting down.
I like what you’re doing, but I feel like the heresies you propose are too tame.
Here are some more radical heresies to consider:
Most people are far more bottlenecked on some combination of akrasia and prospective memory, not on the accuracy of their models of the world. Rationalists in particular would be better off devoting effort to actually doing the obvious things than to understanding the world better.
Self deception is very instrumentally useful a large fraction of real world situations we find ourselves in, and we should use more of it.
Mormons seem to be especially good at coordinating on good lifestyle choices, so we should all consider becoming Mormon.
Among groups of 10+ people, it’s usually more useful to get everyone all working on implementing the same plan than it is to come up with the best plan.
Intelligence (of the sort measured by exams and IQ tests) is only moderately important to success.