I have to admit, I’ve never understood Hanson’s Near-Far distinction either. As described it just doesn’t seem to mesh at all with how I think about thinking. I keep hoping someone else will post their interpretation of it from a sufficiently different viewpoint that I can at least understand it well enough to know if I agree with it or not.
I keep hoping someone else will post their interpretation of it from a sufficiently different viewpoint that I can at least understand it well enough to know if I agree with it or not.
There are two types of thinking: sensory experience, and abstractions about sensory experience. Each type of thinking has strengths and weaknesses.
Sensory thinking lets you leverage a high degree of unconscious knowledge and processing power, applied to detailed models. Abstract thinking can jump several steps at a time, but lacks precision.
A major distinction between the two systems is that our actions are actually driven almost exclusively by the sensory system, and only indirectly influenced by the abstract system. The abstract system, in contrast, exists primarily to fulfill social goals: it’s the brain’s “spin doctor”, whose job is to come up with plausible-sounding explanations that make you seem like an attractive ally, mate, etc.
Thus, each system has different biases: the sensory system is optimized for caring about what happens to you, right now, whereas the abstract system is optimized for thinking about how things “ought” to be for the whole group in the future… in ways that just “coincidentally” turn out to be for your own good. ;-)
The two systems can work together or against each other. In a typical dysfunctional scenario, the sensory system alerts you to a prediction of danger associated with a thought (e.g. of a task you’re about to complete), and the abstract system then invents a plausible reason for not following up on that thought, perhaps followed by a plausible reason to do something else.
Unfortunately, once people notice this, they have a tendency to respond by having their abstract system think, “I shouldn’t do that” or “I should do X instead”… which then does nothing. Or they invent reasons for how they got that way, or why other people or circumstances are against them, or whatever.
What I teach people to do is observe what the sensory machinery is doing, and retrain it to do other things. As I like to put it, “action is not an abstraction”. The only time that our abstract thoughts lead to behavior changes is when they cause us to make connections in the sensory machinery...
Which is why one little story like “Stuck In The Middle With Bruce” has so much more impact on people than just talking in an abstract way about self-defeating behavior.
But what does that have to do with the adjectives of ‘near’ and ‘far’?
People somewhere (someone know the reference?) have done studies on how priming people with certain types of words influences how they react to new information.
The findings noticed that whenever people were made to think of things far in the future or socially distant they were more likely to think abstractly and idealistically. When prompted with things in the present or immediate future or by things that are close to them in their social network they are more likely to react with the practical thinking.
Pjeby’s explaination is a good way of describing just why this has come to be the case.
But what does that have to do with the adjectives of ‘near’ and ‘far’?
The “near” system drives our behavior in relation to things that are “near” in terms of time, space, precision, and detail. The “far” system drives our verbalizations and abstractions regarding things that are “far” on those same axes.
I have to admit, I’ve never understood Hanson’s Near-Far distinction either. As described it just doesn’t seem to mesh at all with how I think about thinking. I keep hoping someone else will post their interpretation of it from a sufficiently different viewpoint that I can at least understand it well enough to know if I agree with it or not.
There are two types of thinking: sensory experience, and abstractions about sensory experience. Each type of thinking has strengths and weaknesses.
Sensory thinking lets you leverage a high degree of unconscious knowledge and processing power, applied to detailed models. Abstract thinking can jump several steps at a time, but lacks precision.
A major distinction between the two systems is that our actions are actually driven almost exclusively by the sensory system, and only indirectly influenced by the abstract system. The abstract system, in contrast, exists primarily to fulfill social goals: it’s the brain’s “spin doctor”, whose job is to come up with plausible-sounding explanations that make you seem like an attractive ally, mate, etc.
Thus, each system has different biases: the sensory system is optimized for caring about what happens to you, right now, whereas the abstract system is optimized for thinking about how things “ought” to be for the whole group in the future… in ways that just “coincidentally” turn out to be for your own good. ;-)
The two systems can work together or against each other. In a typical dysfunctional scenario, the sensory system alerts you to a prediction of danger associated with a thought (e.g. of a task you’re about to complete), and the abstract system then invents a plausible reason for not following up on that thought, perhaps followed by a plausible reason to do something else.
Unfortunately, once people notice this, they have a tendency to respond by having their abstract system think, “I shouldn’t do that” or “I should do X instead”… which then does nothing. Or they invent reasons for how they got that way, or why other people or circumstances are against them, or whatever.
What I teach people to do is observe what the sensory machinery is doing, and retrain it to do other things. As I like to put it, “action is not an abstraction”. The only time that our abstract thoughts lead to behavior changes is when they cause us to make connections in the sensory machinery...
Which is why one little story like “Stuck In The Middle With Bruce” has so much more impact on people than just talking in an abstract way about self-defeating behavior.
But what does that have to do with the adjectives of ‘near’ and ‘far’?
People somewhere (someone know the reference?) have done studies on how priming people with certain types of words influences how they react to new information.
The findings noticed that whenever people were made to think of things far in the future or socially distant they were more likely to think abstractly and idealistically. When prompted with things in the present or immediate future or by things that are close to them in their social network they are more likely to react with the practical thinking.
Pjeby’s explaination is a good way of describing just why this has come to be the case.
The “near” system drives our behavior in relation to things that are “near” in terms of time, space, precision, and detail. The “far” system drives our verbalizations and abstractions regarding things that are “far” on those same axes.