Saint's Excuse
Updated 2026-08-05
INTRODUCTION
English translation pending.
CORE DEFINITION
A principle about the design of rules, moral standards, and procedures. Its core proposition is that feasibility is a condition of compliance: when a requirement exceeds what ordinary people can sustain, they do not perform partially but abandon it, since the standard is already violated and partial compliance earns no credit. The result is worse than a moderate rule would have produced. The key constraint is that the argument concerns standards imposed as requirements rather than aspirational ideals, and it assumes the standard is genuinely unreachable rather than merely demanding.
SCAFFOLDING EFFECT
Reduce cognitive load
- Rule writing: test whether a procedure can be followed on a bad day, not only on a good one. - Compliance check: watch for all-or-nothing abandonment, which signals the standard is set above reach. - Standard setting: choose the level people can hold consistently, then raise it once it holds.
Anchor fast decisions
Compliance is evaluated against a threshold, and once the threshold is unreachable the marginal benefit of partial effort drops to zero because partial effort earns no credit. Effort then collapses to whatever is convenient, which is why an impossible standard produces less compliance than a demanding but reachable one. The same logic operates internally: someone who cannot meet a perfect self-image often abandons the practice rather than perform it imperfectly.
MINIMUM ACTION
In progress 0/1Practice this model in one real situation:
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Source support: Explicit
- ethicsalarms.comhttps://ethicsalarms.com/rule-book/unethical-rationalizations-and-misconceptions/verified
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