This definitely explains why we have things like the drug war (and other idiotic pseudo wars) and can't even learn the second and third order effects of such prohibition after the mass experiment with alcohol prohibition in the twenties and thirties. In fact, it explains a lot if not most bad policy decisions. I'm convinced regular people are simply incapable or unwilling to consider second, third, and higher order effects of their actions and politicians especially take advantage of this to push through atrocious policies. Healthcare policy is another that comes to mind. Retirement saving. Lack of infrastructure spending. Anti vaccine idiots. Etc. Etc. I mean towards people being to incompetent and stupid rather than unwilling, as there is plenty of evidence for that (three quarters of people are purported to not be able to name the three branches of government), but who knows? The end result is the same. Stupid thinking driving forward a stupid populace. I didn't know there was a term for what the stupid were missing till now.
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)
#12I love to do this, keep iterating on n-th order thoughts, figuring out emergent behavior etc etc (systems mapping is actually a quite useful technique to do this) but at some point you need to scale it back down to the 1st order to actually get things done.
It's fun to fantasize where the industry will be heading 10-30 years from now, but figuring out what needs to be done tomorrow is more important.
Re: Second-Order Thinking: What Smart People Use to Outperform (2016)
#13That is quite a lot of words to say "think a few steps ahead".
Re: Second-Order Thinking: What Smart People Use to Outperform (2016)
#14Ordinary people don't like when they are getting asked "And then what?"
Socrates kept asking questions. That was his defining characteristic. We know how that went...
Re: Second-Order Thinking: What Smart People Use to Outperform (2016)
#15I 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.
And where everyone else rifles through them, when you unwittingly leave the bucket permissions wide open for EVERYONE across all objects.
Re: Second-Order Thinking: What Smart People Use to Outperform (2016)
#16I love to do this, keep iterating on n-th order thoughts, figuring out emergent behavior etc etc (systems mapping is actually a quite useful technique to do this) but at some point you need to scale it back down to the 1st order to actually get things done. It's fun to fantasize where the industry will be heading 10-30 years from now, but figuring out what needs to be done tomorrow is more important.
Honest question, just for the sake of respectful debate, not trying to be obnoxious:
Can you actually derive emergent properties from nth-order thinking? I think they're both fascinating topics, but when I think about emergent properties of human biology, I struggle to imagine how I could have derived them from nth-order logic. To me, emergent properties seem like something you have to observe first, not something that you can reach from any kind of reason. Emergent properties are so awe-inspiring precisely because you can't predict them when you go down a level or two.
Re: Second-Order Thinking: What Smart People Use to Outperform (2016)
#17Why didn't I think of that!?
Re: Second-Order Thinking: What Smart People Use to Outperform (2016)
#18Smart people get everyone else to bog themselves down with "second-order thinking" perpetually tying themselves in mental knots wondering endlessly "what happens next" and "should I or shouldn't I." That is because smart people that get shit done will not think twice, do the thing, and then quickly re-evaluate the results and proceed apace. Smart people that get shit done, outperform by actually executing. You can't predict the future. Asking "but what about in ten years" is the height of hubris. The only answer can be "who knows."
Re: Second-Order Thinking: What Smart People Use to Outperform (2016)
#19Maybe world policy makers should think to the nth order before making bad policies.
Re: Second-Order Thinking: What Smart People Use to Outperform (2016)
#20Smart people get everyone else to bog themselves down with "second-order thinking" perpetually tying themselves in mental knots wondering endlessly "what happens next" and "should I or shouldn't I." That is because smart people that get shit done will not think twice, do the thing, and then quickly re-evaluate the results and proceed apace. Smart people that get shit done, outperform by actually executing. You can't…
Depending on your aim, smarter people probably don't spend time bogging others down, and instead probably fall closer to the teach a man to fish side of things.