I’m particularly perplexed by the claim that war would be solved by higher intelligence. Many wars are due to ideological priorities. I don’t see how you can expect necessarily (or even with high probability) that ideologues will be less inclined to go to war if they are smarter.
Violence has been declining on (pretty much) every timescale: Steven Pinker: Myth of Violence. I think one could argue that this is because of greater collective intelligence of human race.
I do accept that the equation is a pretty accurate description of akrasia and has been proven empirically, but personally I’ve found that the type of strategy OP proposes is not effective for me.
First, the crucial steps of the algorithm require the exact same mental resources that are missing when I have the worst bouts of procrastination. When it’s clear that I’m procrastinating because I haven’t divided the task into smaller subtasks, the idea of doing this division is as difficult as it is to try to start the task itself.
Second, the attacking part of the algorithm seems to provoke far/abstract thinking mode, which makes me more prone to procrastination. Any algorithm or strategy that does not contain ridiculously concrete steps has failed me, sooner or later. Anything that lures me to thinking of, say, long term achievements of using the strategy has made it much more likely to just not use the strategy.
In general, I think it’s useful to establish some baseline measurement for one’s productivity. At the time of worst procrastination, it seems obvious that a successful strategy will cure whatever it is one is suffering from at the moment. But if you adopt a long-term strategy, the effect is probably going to be much smaller than you initially thought and is going to be difficult to distinguish.
I personally measure the time I’ve spent in workspaces I’ve nominated to different types of tasks (“zoning out” (random web-surfing), meta-work (email, instant messaging with colleagues etc), real work). I had to use the system for quite a while to begin experimenting with different strategies. Now I can see if a strategy makes a difference and whether I can maintain it for long term.