My Conclusions
It seems there is Far Near and Near Near, and if you ever again find yourself with time
to meta-think that you are operating in Near mode.… then you’re actually in Far mode.
and so I will be more suspicious of the hypothetical thought experiments from now on.
When one watches the movie series called “Saw”, they will experience the “near mode” of thinking much more than the examples given in this thread. “Saw” is about people trapped in various situations, enforced by mechanical means only (no psychotic person to beg for mercy, the same way you can’t beg the train to stop), where they must choose which things to sacrifice to save a larger number of lives, sometimes including their own life. For example, the first “Saw” movie starts with 2 dieing people trapped in an abandoned basement, with their legs chained to the wall, and the only way the first person can escape is to cut off their foot with the saw. Many times in the movie series, the group of trapped people chose whose turn it was to go into the next dangerous area to get the key to the next room. Similarly, the psychotic person who puts the people in those situations thinks he is doing it for their own good because he chooses people who have little respect for their own life and through the process of escaping his horrible traps some of them have a better state of mind after escaping than before. I’m not saying that would really work, but that’s the main subject of the movies and is shown in many ways simultaneously. These are good examples of how to avoid “meta thinking” and really think in “near mode”: Watch the “Saw” movies.
When one watches the movie series called “Saw”, they will experience the “near mode” of thinking much more than the examples given in this thread. “Saw” is about people trapped in various situations, enforced by mechanical means only (no psychotic person to beg for mercy, the same way you can’t beg the train to stop), where they must choose which things to sacrifice to save a larger number of lives, sometimes including their own life. For example, the first “Saw” movie starts with 2 dieing people trapped in an abandoned basement, with their legs chained to the wall, and the only way the first person can escape is to cut off their foot with the saw. Many times in the movie series, the group of trapped people chose whose turn it was to go into the next dangerous area to get the key to the next room. Similarly, the psychotic person who puts the people in those situations thinks he is doing it for their own good because he chooses people who have little respect for their own life and through the process of escaping his horrible traps some of them have a better state of mind after escaping than before. I’m not saying that would really work, but that’s the main subject of the movies and is shown in many ways simultaneously. These are good examples of how to avoid “meta thinking” and really think in “near mode”: Watch the “Saw” movies.