Comments on: Abstract/Distant Future Bias

By: Overcoming Bias : Disagreement Is Near-Far Bias

Overcoming Bias : Disagreement Is Near-Far Bias — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 19:50:18 +0000

[...] Liberman and Yaacov Trope on their awkwardly-named "Construal level theory", and wrote a post I estimated "to be the most dense with useful info on identifying our biases I've ever [...]

By: Roko

Roko — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 18:46:18 +0000

This post should be tagged near/far, as it is hard to find, and I believe it is the seminal post on the near mode/far mode dichotomy.

By: Stuff White People Like on Signaling – false symmetry

Stuff White People Like on Signaling – false symmetry — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 01:04:09 +0000

[...] a recent one I enjoyed that seems to be about Robin Hanson’s near/far biases and preference for visible signaling: …white people in places like Los Angeles or Austin, TX [...]

By: Certainly Uncertain « Hegemonicon

Certainly Uncertain « Hegemonicon — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 03:36:47 +0000

[...] more on near/far bias, see here: http://www.overcomingbias.com/2008/11/abstractdistant.html Comments [...]

By: Continued comments for “Wars we know” « Entitled to an Opinion

Continued comments for “Wars we know” « Entitled to an Opinion — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 02:45:01 +0000

[...] came in swarms, the isolationists were one-offs Though I myself share your take, that sets off warning signs. I’m sure there were plenty of interventionists who were horrible in their own quirky [...]

By: Backup Brain » Blog Archive » Our biases about the future

Backup Brain » Blog Archive » Our biases about the future — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 18:26:57 +0000

[...] This post by Robin Hanson strikes me as a gold mine of opportunities for concept design: We seem primed to confidently see history as an inevitable march toward a theory-predicted global conflict with an alien united them determined to oppose our core symbolic values, making infeasible overly-risky overconfident plans to oppose them. We seem primed to neglect the value and prospect of trillions of quirky future creatures not fundamentally that different from us, focused on their simple day-to-day pleasures, mostly getting along peacefully in vastly-varied uncoordinated and hard-to-predict local cultures and life-styles. [...]

By: Future Discounting and Clone Armies. « Hegemonicon

Future Discounting and Clone Armies. « Hegemonicon — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 00:49:03 +0000

[...] is my (admittedly esoteric) way of fighting future discounting. The human brain has a tendency to overvalue our current preferences and undervalue our [...]

By: Karl Fraser

Karl Fraser — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 08:16:48 +0000

This relates, albeit tangentially, to something I wrote on my Ernst Jünger blog, “Living in no man´s land”.

http://ernst-juenger.blogspot.com/2009/03/living-in-no-mans-land.html

Karl Fraser

By: Rosa

Rosa — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 19:48:47 +0000

“Far thinking” includes abstract goal-setting decisions in general. “Near thinking” includes the decision-making for actions for now. When near thinking goes on, lots of realities and even other goals, come into play, at the time and opportunity when the decision must be made.

So in the far/near example of “lose weight”, each decision instance of eating, and each instance of not exercising, must win (in significant numbers of instances) in the context of consistency with every other goal which might influence decisions in the moment. Such as: seek cameraderie with other donut-eating colleagues, get to work on time, make an elderly relative feel appreciated, keep a domestic relationship tranquil. These are all goals which are not apparently in conflict with “lose weight” – in far thinking. A decision in the moment, though, might well contribute to the aggregated behaviour results of “don’t exercise more or eat less”.

So rather than two minds, it’s one mind struggling to apply ALL of the sparse abstract models called by the component complexity of the specific reality at hand. I guess the models must be weighted.

By: Robin Hanson

Robin Hanson — Sat, 29 Nov 2008 17:43:01 +0000

Roko, if by “interdisciplinary” you mean you will work decades to connect two familiar disciples that have neglected each other, you have a chance. If you mean you won’t focus at all, and just pop from subject to subject as it strikes your fancy, yes that is hopeless.