Far Mode
Article
Far Mode is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 3 times across 3 issues between July 25, 2023 and January 23, 2026. The archive places it in contexts such as “When you’re dealing with topics in Far Mode”; “One of them is “near mode vs. far mode”, his take on construal level theory”; “These go by many names: Near Mode vs. Far Mode”. It most often appears alongside Near Mode, 9-11, ACX.
Metadata
- Category: Concepts
- Mention count: 3
- Issue count: 3
- First seen: July 25, 2023
- Last seen: January 23, 2026
Appears In
- We’re Not Platonists, We’ve Just Learned The Bitter Lesson
- Response to Hanson On Health Care
- Slightly Against The “Other People’s Money” Argument Against Aid
Related Pages
-
- Near Mode (3 shared issues)
-
- 9-11 (1 shared issues)
-
- ACX (1 shared issues)
-
- AI (1 shared issues)
-
- Albert Einstein (1 shared issues)
-
- Alcoholics Anonymous (1 shared issues)
-
- Arnold Schwarzenegger (1 shared issues)
-
- Beethoven (1 shared issues)
-
- Beware Isolated Demands For Rigor (1 shared issues)
-
- Canada (1 shared issues)
-
- CATO Unbound (1 shared issues)
-
- Cochrane Collaboration (1 shared issues)
External Links
Source Context
Recovered passages from the original issue text. When the raw archive preserved outbound links inside the source passage, they are listed directly under the quote.
Ten years ago, I asked people to Beware Isolated Demands For Rigor. When you’re dealing with topics in Far Mode, it’s tempting to get all philosophical - what if matter doesn’t exist? What if everything’s an illusion? Instead, I recommend thinking about future intelligence explosions in Near Mode, in which superintelligent machines are no philosophically different than machines that are very very big.
Or we can distinguish between good and bad medical interventions, and we should throw out the bad ones and keep the good ones (in which case why does Robin keep saying the opposite, why does he call this a “monkey trap”, etc? And wouldn’t it be better for Robin to frame his position as “medicine generally works well, but there are some interventions that aren’t evidence-based enough”, which is the consensus medical position?) If this is a false trichotomy, Robin should tell me how! Let’s Do Near Mode! Despite (maybe?) disagreeing about health care, I have a huge amount of respect for Robin. He’s developed or popularized many of the ideas that still shape my thinking. One of them is “near mode vs. far mode”, his take on construal level theory. I find it helpful at times like this to try to go as Near Mode as possible. For example, in one of the papers I linked above, Robin writes: Unfortunately, even if you believe everything that I have said, your behavior will probably not change much as a result. You will still spend nearly as much on medicine for yourself and your family, and spend much less effort on the more effective ways to increase lifespan. After all, your sick family would consider it the worst kind of betrayal if you did not “do something,” and give them all the medicine that your doctor recommends (Hanson, 2002). Alas, the problem of the fear of death muddling our thinking is so much worse than we imagined. I interpret this as him saying that if you were smart, had the courage of your convictions, and weren’t so obsessed with signaling, then you, the literal reader, would cut your individual health care expenses right now after learning about his theory. I, like many people, would like to spend less money on health care without my health being negatively affected in any way. The Nearest way possible to approach this is to think about how Robin’s theory suggests that I act. Here are some categories of health problem that I might one day have to think about: A heart attack or stroke (going to the hospital)
Inline links: construal level theory
The average person nods along to insane statements like “if Elon Musk distributed his fortune evenly, every American would get ten million dollars” and probably doesn’t have the reasoning skills to think about coordination problems clearly. Along with these reasons, it seems like people don’t donate money even when they care a lot about something. How many people care a lot about wokeness, either pro or con? How many have donated significant amounts of money to organizations promoting or opposing it? Why? Is the answer just free rider problems? Are they just virtue signaling when they talk about wokeness, and they don’t really care? Forget about reaching 90% - would even half of Americans sign this contract and follow through? Or would we announce the end of coercive military taxation to great fanfare, and then immediately be invaded by Canada and turned into the 11th province? Contra the economists, I’m not sure that we fund the military through coercive taxation only to avoid free rider problems. I think we fund it through taxation to avoid the same kinds of transaction cost issues that would sink the assurance contract. Since charity suffers these same transaction costs, the same arguments may apply. The Multiple Preferences Argument Everyone has multiple conflicting sets of preferences that change based on how they’re being elicited. These go by many names: Near Mode vs. Far Mode, superego vs. id, “my best self” vs. “my regular self”. Many people say phones are terrible and destroying society and that their life would be much better without a phone and that they wish they could quit their phone. Then they spend all their time on their phone.