Tag Archives: NearFar

Near Is Selfish

By Robin Hanson · March 3, 2010 1:30 pm · Comments (14)

If the ship is sinking, do you save yourself or risk your life to save others? The answer, it seems, depends on how long the sinking takes. If there’s enough time, you can switch from adrenalin-driven self-preservation to conscience-driven self-sacrifice.

The insights come from a new comparison of survival data from the sinking of the Titanic in 1912 with the loss of 1517 lives out of 2207, and the fateful torpedoing of the Lusitania three years later, which killed 1198 passengers out of 1949.

The main difference between the two sinkings was time: it took 2 hours and 40 minutes for the Titanic to go down, while the Lusitania sank in just 18 minutes. The result: a huge difference in survivor profiles.

On the Lusitania, survival favoured able-bodied men aged between 16 and 35, … On the Titanic, in contrast, the same group of men were … more likely to die. … Children were 30.9 per cent more likely to survive on the Titanic, compared with passengers over 35, while on the Lusitania children had no better survival chance. …

Strikingly, women of all ages on the Titanic had a probability of survival 53 per cent higher than for men, compared with an 11 per cent higher chance of dying on the Lusitania. … First-class passengers on the Titanic had huge survival advantages non-existent on the Lusitania.

More here.   Yet more support for the thesis that far mode is more for social image, near mode more for personal gain.

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Drunk Is Near

By Robin Hanson · February 14, 2010 5:55 pm · Comments (23)

Malcom Gladwell talks about how drunks act very differently in different cultures.  If you remember that sex is near, love is far, you shouldn’t be surprised to learn the key:

If you are good-looking and the world agrees that you are good-looking, drinking doesn’t make you think you’re even better-looking.  Drinking only makes you feel you’re better-looking if you think you’re good-looking and the world doesn’t agree.  Alcohol is also commonly believed to reduce anxiety.  … Put a stressed out drinker in front of an exciting football game, and he’ll forget his troubles.  But put him in quiet bar somewhere, all by himself, and he’ll grow more anxious. …

We’ve misread the effects of alcohol on the brain.  Its principle effect is to narrow our emotional and mental field of vision.  It causes, they write, “a state of short-sightedness in which superficially understood, immediate aspects of experience have a disproportionate influence on behavior and emotion.”

Alcohol makes the thing in the foreground even more salient and the thing in the background disappear.  … The drinker is … at the mercy of whatever is in front of him. …. Psychologists …went into a series of bars and made the patrons .. imagine that they had met an attractive person … ended up in bed – only to discover neither of them had a condom.  The subjects were then ask to respond on a scale of one (very unlikely) to nine (very likely) to … “I would have sex.”  … Drunk people came in at 5.36. … Sober people came in at 3.91.  … But [they] went back to the bars and stamped the hands of some of the patrons with the phrase “AIDS kills.”  Drinkers with the hand stamp were slightly less likely than the sober people to want to have sex in that situation.

So do we drink to make ourselves think more nearly, and so bond more closely to those around us?  Or is it only about showing that our bodies are strong enough to withstand chemical overdoses?  And why wouldn’t we have evolved to think just as nearly as was useful to think?

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Two Movies

By Robin Hanson · February 4, 2010 11:25 pm · Comments (25)

I have two movies to recommend.

  1. Nobody Knows is terribly touching, and for exactly that reason, hard to watch.  It depicts dramatic story-like events, but it doesn’t give the usual cues to suggest you process it in a story-like far mode.  The main characters are children, who you see in near mode, up close and personal, mostly without words.  If you love children, you will love these children.  Things happen to them, but slowly, and without clear “here is a key event” markers.  So you process the events as near, with less story-mode emotional distance; you are more naked to the full terror of bad possibilities.  It makes me wonder what other stories would feel like, if we felt them as nearby.  And if I would dare to watch them.
  2. The Third & The Seven, a free ten minute entirely CG (computer graphics) clip, is a truly spectacular demo of what CG can do today.  I’ve watched it daily for two weeks now and still marvel at its details. See the hidef version if you can.  If you doubt at all that virtual reality could really be as detailed and vivid as our reality, take a look. (HT Rob Wiblin).
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Telescope Effect

By Robin Hanson · January 19, 2010 11:00 am · Comments (16)
Even if 10 deaths do not make us feel 10 times as sad as a single death, shouldn’t we feel at least twice as sad? There is disturbing evidence that shows we may actually care less. … Paul Slovic … asked two groups of volunteers shortly after the Rwandan genocide to imagine they were officials in charge of a humanitarian rescue effort. Both groups were told their money could save 4,500 lives at a refugee camp, but one group was told the refugee camp had 11,000 people, whereas the other group was told the refugee camp had 250,000 people. Slovic found that people were much more reluctant to spend the money on the large camp than they were to spend the money on the small camp. … Would they rather spend $10 million to save 10,000 lives from a disease that caused 15,000 deaths a year, or save 20,000 lives from a disease that killed 290,000 people a year? Overwhelmingly, volunteers preferred to spend money saving the 10,000 lives rather than the 20,000 lives. …
Slovic once told volunteers about a 7-year-old girl in Mali who was starving and in need of help. They were given a certain amount of money and asked how much they were willing to spend to help her. On average, people gave half their money to help the girl. … One group of volunteers was asked whether they would give money to the little girl; another was asked whether they would donate money to the little boy. A third group of volunteers was told about both the boy and the girl and asked how much they were willing to give. People gave the same amount of money when told about either the boy or the girl. But when the children were presented together, the volunteers gave less.

Even if 10 deaths do not make us feel 10 times as sad as a single death, shouldn’t we feel at least twice as sad? There is disturbing evidence that shows we may actually care less. … Paul Slovic … asked two groups of volunteers shortly after the Rwandan genocide to imagine they were officials in charge of a humanitarian rescue effort. Both groups were told their money could save 4,500 lives at a refugee camp, but one group was told the refugee camp had 11,000 people, whereas the other group was told the refugee camp had 250,000 people. Slovic found that people were much more reluctant to spend the money on the large camp than they were to spend the money on the small camp. … Would they rather spend $10 million to save 10,000 lives from a disease that caused 15,000 deaths a year, or save 20,000 lives from a disease that killed 290,000 people a year? Overwhelmingly, volunteers preferred to spend money saving the 10,000 lives rather than the 20,000 lives. …

Slovic once told volunteers about a 7-year-old girl in Mali who was starving and in need of help. They were given a certain amount of money and asked how much they were willing to spend to help her. On average, people gave half their money to help the girl. … One group of volunteers was asked whether they would give money to the little girl; another was asked whether they would donate money to the little boy. A third group of volunteers was told about both the boy and the girl and asked how much they were willing to give. People gave the same amount of money when told about either the boy or the girl. But when the children were presented together, the volunteers gave less.

More here.  If you want to care more about distant victims, set aside your mental image of a large tragedy, focus your mind on one particular victim, and open your heart.  If you want to care less, instead of thinking about any one victim, try to visualize a much larger group of similar victims.  Now here’s the key question: do you want to care more or less?  Not sure? See which image you put in your mind, long enough to act on it.

This puzzles me a bit re near-far analysis.  It suggests we help distant victims more in near mode, even though far mode is where we more express abstract ideals we want others to see.  Do we not actually want others to think we help distant victims?

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AI In Far And Near View

By Robin Hanson · January 15, 2010 8:00 pm · Comments (29)

Looking far into the distance, your eyes often see a sharp boundary between earth and sky. But if you were to travel to that furthest part of earth your eye can now see, you may not find a sharp boundary there.  Far mode simplifies, not only suppressing detail, but making you think detail is unimportant.  If you saw two ships battling on the horizon, you’d be too tempted to expect the bigger ship to win.

From a distance, future techs also seem overly simple and hence disruptive.  If in 1672 you had seen Verbiest’s steam-powered vehicle, you might have imagined that the first nation with cheap capable cars could conquer the world.  After all, they might build tanks and troop transports, and literally run circles around enemy troops.  But while having somewhat better cars did sometimes help some nations, it was far from an overwhelming advantage. Cars slowly gained in cost, ability, and number; there was no particular day when one nation had vastly more capable cars.

Similar scenarios have played out for a great many techs, like rockets, radios, lasers, or computers.  While one might imagine from afar that the difference between none of a tech and a “full” version would give a dramatic advantage, actual progress was more incremental, reducing team differences in tech levels.  Overall differences in wealth and tech capability were usually better explanations for the advantages some nations had over others.

The first far images of nanotech were also simple, stark, and disruptive.  They imagined one team could quickly and reliably assemble, from cheap plentiful feedstocks, large quantities of a large set of big atom arrangements, while other teams had near-current capabilities.  In this scenario, the first first team might well conquer the world, or accidentally destroy it via “grey goo.”

The nanotech transition seems less disruptive, however, if we see more detail, and imagine a series of incrementally more capable assemblers, able to build larger objects, faster, more reliably, from more types of feedstocks, using more kinds of local chemical bonds, at a wider range of assembler-assembled angles, and so on.  After all, we already have ribosome assemblers, with a very limited range of feeds, bonds, angles, etc.  Each new type of assembler would lower the cost of making a new class of objects.

Far images of artificial intelligence (AI) can also be overly stark.  If you saw minds as having a single relevant ”intelligence” parameter, with humans unable but machines able to change their parameter, you might well rue the day a machine whizzed past the human level.  Especially if you thought God-levels might follow a month later, and if you thought this parameter’s typical value was what determined a team’s power. Continue Reading "AI In Far And Near View" »

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Privacy Is Far

By Robin Hanson · December 3, 2009 2:40 pm · Comments (19)

The British government has decided to go ahead with its plans under what it calls the Intercept Modernisation Programme to force every telecommunication company and Internet service provider to keep a record of all its customers’ personal communications, showing whom they have contacted and when and where, as well as the Web sites they have visited. … The information … will be accessible to 653 public bodies, ”including police, local councils, the Financial Services Authority, the ambulance service, fire authorities and even prison governors.

”They will not require the permission of a judge or a magistrate to obtain the information, but simply the authorisation of a senior police officer or the equivalent of a deputy head of department at a local authority,” The Telegraph says.

The only bit of good news, if you can call it that, is that the information won’t be held in a central database … and the full rollout will be delayed until after the next election. If the Tories or Liberal Democrats win, they say that the intercept program will be changed in scope and function. However, as happened in the United States after the last election, once politicians are in power, promises about privacy and spying on citizens seem to become less important.

More here.  Two decades ago when wonks discussed the coming brave new web/internet world, privacy was an huge concern.  In contrast, today when people choose what to reveal on the web, privacy seems a minor concern.  Together, these suggest that privacy is far – we care about privacy as a high noble social concern, but not as a personal practical matter.  (At least not until someone close in our social world starts to see our private info.)

But if so, why do politicians prefer to schedule to invade your privacy in the future, instead of now?  Won’t that make us all the more concerned about it?

My guess: a broad national policy today is near in time, but far in social scope, so still invokes a substantially far view.  So politicians are still held to ideals on it.  But the far view makes us idealize our future politicians more than today’s; we think our side is more likely to win, and future politicians will act more ideally.  So we don’t expect future politicians to let such privacy invasions go forward.  And since all far events tend to seem less likely, there is less to worry about.  When it actually happens later, they can say move along, there’s no news here, this was scheduled long ago.

Many said Bush’s privacy invasions revealed his evilness, but few care Obama has no plans to reverse those invasions.  Even if UK and US governments don’t misuse this info, their policies will give cover for similar policies elsewhere.  From afar, big brother epitomizes evil and must be resisted.  Up close, he seems tame, until he doesn’t, when its too late.

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Movies As Detached Detail

By Robin Hanson · November 20, 2009 9:00 am · Comments (7)

Precious and An Education were the last two movies I saw on a big screen, and both seemed to me to support the idea that movies are basically believable detail intended to be processed in near mode, combined with an overall story arc intended to be processed in far mode.  Both movies get high marks for believable environment and actor micro-expression detail, and a lot of relatively realistic setting and character features.  But the overall story arcs are rather predictable and not especially believable – they affirm standard morals and myths of modern viewers.  While in real life believable near detail adds evidential support to related far claims, the “detached detail” of fiction breaks this connection.  As I said for science fiction:

Grand historical arcs must be described in the story, but since they are processed by readers mostly in far mode, readers are not very critical about how plausible are those arcs.  The near details of the lives of the major characters, in contrast, are processed more in near mode, so SF writers must make those seem more realistic.  (Of course we don’t process even these in as near a mode as details of our own lives now – it is still fiction after all.)  This all supports my detached detail warning: don’t assume that because the character lives described are compelling, the historical arcs are as plausible.

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Beware Far Ethics

By Robin Hanson · October 27, 2009 7:00 pm · Comments (39)

Philosophy triumphs easily over past evils and future evils; but present evils triumph over it. Francois De La Rochefoucauld.
Katja Grace’s translation:  We nobly analyse distant things, and in the present do whatever the hell we want.

If you stopped an articulate person who had just passed a homeless bum, and asked why she did not help, she’d probably explain this isn’t a simple question.  She might mention ethics complexities, but she’d probably focus on the complex social context.  Is the bum mentally ill, sick, stupid, lazy, or faking?  Does the bum have family who should help first, did he arrive recently in this area, and who is best placed to know what he needs?

At my Georgetown lecture last night on our robot future, the smart econ students focused their questions almost entirely on ethics.  They seemed to assume they understood enough about the social situation, and were obsessed with the ethical ways for humans to treat robots, robots to treat humans, etc.  I’ll bet they’d also be quick to condemn Roman centurions’ ethics, also figuring they understood enough about their social situation.  But I think they’d need to learn lots more about either of these worlds before they could begin to offer useful ethics advice.

Some of my young idealistic friends like to talk about figuring out what they could do to most help the world, and might go to Burma to see how the really poor live.  I tell them one has to learn lots of details about a place to figure out how to improve it, and they’d do better to try this on a part of the world they understand better.  But that doesn’t sound nearly as fun as saving the whole world all at once.

Humans overwhelmed by the social complexities of helping a bum nearby think they know enough about societies far away, so that ethics becomes the main concern there.  I see the same thing in discussions of future biotech or nanotech – ethics becomes the main frame, even though we only have the faintest ideas of how future societies might integrate those techs.  Beware the easy confidence of advising worlds far from your knowledge or consequence.

Added 29Oct: The obvious way to help poor folk far away without relying on your poor understanding of their world is to rely on the one thing you know best about their world: it is poor.  Invite them to move to your rich world, to share in its riches.  If your neighbors hinder you, use what you know about them to change that.

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War From Near And Far

By Robin Hanson · October 16, 2009 6:00 am · Comments (18)

Longtime OB commenter TGGP gives quotes showing the “near/far dichotomy is reflected in Randall Collins’ “Violence: A Microsociological Theory”:

Soldiers who have been in combat and had direct contact with the enemy tend to depict him as courageous; it is enemies on more distant combat zones who are not respected; and soldiers in rear areas, and even more so civilians at home, who express a low regard for the enemy. …

The higher the rank, the more the person identifies with the formal frontstage ideals of the organization and is likely to talk in official rhetoric. … The contrast between detailed observation of what is happening in each micro-situation, and summary accounts of an ideal-typical version of performance; the latter would tend to be more idealized toward a favorable image, and we would expect that this bias would grow with as the actual memories of combat experience become more distant. …

In the modern era, casualties were caused primarily by artillery fired at long distance. In the musket era of parade-ground formations, cannon operating closer to the battle line generally accounted for more than 50 percent of the casualties. … The sheer distance from the enemy, and especially being shielded from personally seeing the men one is trying to kill increases the level of [soldier] performance. …The tension/fear of combat is almost completely debilitating at close range. …

Pre-battle elation … [is] troops’ “strange and fearsome delight at being at last up ‘really’ up against it”. This is a case of feelings prior to these men’s first battle, still in the phase of rhetoric. … Soldiers in rear areas express more hatred of the enemy, and more ferocious attitudes toward them, than frontline troops. … Whereas combat soldiers are more likely to treat prisoners well … rear area troops tend to treat prisoners more callously. … Civilians at home are more likely to express violent rhetorical hatred. … This fits the general pattern of all fights: surrounded by bluster and gesture up until the actual fight situation, when the emotion shifts drastically and tension/fear takes over. …

The proportion of empty rhetoric expands with each step toward the rear; war is successively more idealized, the enemy successively more dehumanized, attitudes toward killing successively more callous, and the whole affair more like the cheering of sports fans. …

The circumstances that cause the most fear not necessarily those that are objectively the most dangerous. Artillery shells and mortars … cause by far the most casualties – and the soldiers themselves generally know that – but the greatest difficulty in combat performance is in confronting small-arms fire at the forward edge of the combat zone. …  The source of strain is neither fear of death and injury, nor aversion to killing in principle. … What is different, and what seems to buffer them from tension/fear, is that [officers] personally do not have to do the killing.

War is a powerful horrifying example of just how badly our minds can be deluded by our “idealistic” far view.  Our far view of war functions well to help us signal our loyalty and commitment to our associates, but it makes us far too willing to make war and be cruel to our enemy, and makes us too willing to use tech that can kill from afar.

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Sex is Near, Love is Far

By Robin Hanson · October 13, 2009 6:00 am · Comments (19)

Sex is near and love is far, logical analysis is near while “aha” creativity is far, and conventional art is near while unconventional art is far.  These results seem to confirm my suggestion that near mode emphasizes practical action, while far mode emphasizes social image.  Sex is more what we really want, while love is more how we present ourselves to get such things.  Analysis tends to be more practical, while “creativity” and unconventionality is more done to show off.  More here and here:

When in love, people typically focus on a long-term perspective, which should enhance holistic thinking and thereby creative thought, whereas when experiencing sexual encounters, they focus on the present and on concrete details enhancing analytic thinking. … Two studies … found support for this hypothesis. …

Participants primed with love reported more wishes, goals, or events that related to future events compared to participants primed with sex or those in the control group …

The creative insight task … is (a) ultimately soluble, (b) likely to produce an impasse during the solution, and (3) likely to produce an “aha!” experience when the solution is discovered after prolonged efforts. An example: …

A dealer in antique coins got an offer to buy a beautiful bronze coin. The coin had an emperor’s head on one side and the date 544 B.C. stamped on the other. The dealer examined the coin, but instead of buying it, he called the police. Why? …

For the analytic thinking task, four logic problems from the Graduate Record Examination (GRE) of the form “If A < B and C > B then?” … involve evaluating the truth value of a number of propositions given an initial set of basic facts. … Continue Reading "Sex is Near, Love is Far" »

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