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Second-Order Thinking: What Smart People Use to Outperform (2016)

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Re: Second-Order Thinking: What Smart People Use to Outperform (2016)

#2
I call it S1 (simple 1, arrogant and ignorant) vs S2 (simple 2, which is elegant and informed), but I’ve only found it possible to attain S2 after navigating the complexity between these two points, which implies that I’m often guilty of S1 thinking as the genesis of getting to S2, if I have the sand for it.

Re: Second-Order Thinking: What Smart People Use to Outperform (2016)

#5

I call it S1 (simple 1, arrogant and ignorant) vs S2 (simple 2, which is elegant and informed), but I’ve only found it possible to attain S2 after navigating the complexity between these two points, which implies that I’m often guilty of S1 thinking as the genesis of getting to S2, if I have the sand for it.

And S3 is where you store all your memories.

Re: Second-Order Thinking: What Smart People Use to Outperform (2016)

#6

> The ability to think through problems to the second, third, and nth order—or what we will call second-order thinking for short—is a powerful tool that supercharges your thinking. Clearly it should be called higher-order thinking.

This is already a similar concept -

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Higher-order_thinking

I would be quite happy to see these kinds of concepts rolled into one.

Looking back, most times I heard "higher order thinking" at school, I feel like they meant "thinking at a higher level of abstraction" (as I would describe it now).

You could make an argument that the kind of "nth derivative thinking" identified here is similar though.

Re: Second-Order Thinking: What Smart People Use to Outperform (2016)

#7
This reminds me of Frédéric Bastiat and his essay "That Which is Seen, and That Which is Not Seen". Nicely formatted at http://bastiat.org/en/twisatwins.html

The article notes that "It’s often easier to identify when people didn’t adequately consider the second and subsequent order impacts." That failure to consider the second order impacts is what Bastiat refers to as "That Which is Not Seen"

Re: Second-Order Thinking: What Smart People Use to Outperform (2016)

#9
The best way to exercise second order thinking is to play turn based games like chess or even magic the gathering. You can’t be good at those games without considering actions several turns ahead and aggregating a tremendous amount of knowledge about the game, and you get almost immediate feedback on how good your thought process actually was.
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