Second-Order Thinking: What Smart People Use to Outperform (2016) • Hacker News Board

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

#31

Post by whatshisface » Fri, Apr 05, 2019, 2:10 AM UTC

ilaksh wrote: post #24

blattimwind wrote: post #4

> 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.

Just "planning" seems adequate to me.

If the author called it planning then everyone would realize that they had already heard of it...

People might also realize that with every additional step of reasoning the chance that you got it right decays exponentially.

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

#32

Post by aphextron » Fri, Apr 05, 2019, 2:12 AM UTC

This closely mirrors my own thesis on genius.

There are first level, direct thinkers. This is the lower 50% of all people, although everyone is capable of it. It is direct and without irony, sarcasm, or self reflection. Think slapstick comedy, or superhero movies.

The second level is in 4th wall breaking, analogy, simile, anything which takes "getting" the joke beyond the purely visual. Most people who consider themselves "smart" fall here. About the 50th to 90th percentile of intelligence/creativity.

Third level is hard to describe with words by it's nature. It's all about indirection. Not making an analogy, but taking the analogy for granted and riffing off of that. Most truly genius artists, comedians, musicians, scientists, etc. live at this level. Think the comedy of someone like Dave Chappelle, the music of Bob Dylan, or scientists like Stephen Hawking.

The fourth level is unattainable for humans as a constant state. The very best third level people can just barely get glimpses of it, and bring those glimpses back down for us to see. These are our all time great works of art, and generational scientific breakthroughs. Picasso, Bach, and Einstein are the archetypes here. But what we (the second level masses) are able to see is just a projection, like a 3 dimensional representation of a 4 dimensional shape. The effect is still mind-blowing, but unless you're at that 3rd level it's impossible to really conceive its' true nature. Genius is in the ability to translate those brief fleeting glimpses of the 4th level by a 3rd level person into something intelligible by the 2nd and 1st.

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

#33

Post by pryce » Fri, Apr 05, 2019, 2:17 AM UTC

DoreenMichele wrote: post #27

The lack of second order thinking seems to be the essence of what ails modern medicine. "I have an infection!" "Time for antibiotics!" Don't bother to ask "And then what?" Some populations are given antibiotics so regularly that it isn't uncommon for them to develop antibiotic resistant infections and even lose their colon to E. Coli. We are given drugs with a multi page handout covering side effects, the doctors tak…

A significant amount of medical academia is definitely concerned with upstream causes, especially since a great deal of overall mortality these days is from cancers and heart disease, where impeding the upstream causes can have a large affect on overall mortality rates. This in some ways contrasts with a perspective where people fall ill primarily to infections and it is primarily the role of medicine to identify and cure those.

Even when an upstream cause for an issue is infective, (for example the young adult deaths from Rhuematic Fever in my country, New Zealand), there are many further upstream causes such as the level of insulation in housing, socioeconomic deprivation, the level of access to primary care physicians, access to transport, etc.

A crucial issue is whether the healthcare and economic system are geared to encourage or discourage addressing the most strongly associated upstream causes that are identified. In countries with established government-funded healthcare systems, options like public health campaigns and legislation are considered as tools that can potentially be brought to bear on these issues. In other countries where government-funded healthcare is not a norm, these options are less emphasised. In a system oriented towards private healthcare, often the approach leans more reactive than proactive, eg likely to be initiated as the response to a costly court ruling.

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

#34

Post by hinkley » Fri, Apr 05, 2019, 2:21 AM UTC

whynotminot wrote: post #26

munin wrote: post #18

Smart 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…

Please don't give this man a company. I agree that smart, effective people do generally have a bias toward action. But not in the bull in the shop "thinking twice is a waste of my time" sort of way you're describing.

Yeah I was thinking this is how Erie Canal, love canal and more boring things like Clinton Lake happened.

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

#35

Post by hn_throwaway_99 » Fri, Apr 05, 2019, 2:24 AM UTC

While I agree with most of this, this can also lead to a kind of "analysis paralysis". I've seen a good number of "first order thinkers" succeed because they just plow through stuff, and when the indirect consequences appear that they didn't originally think about, they plow through that, too.

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

#36

Post by ellius » Fri, Apr 05, 2019, 2:25 AM UTC

kaycebasques wrote: post #16

vincentmarle wrote: post #12

I 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 th…

I doubt that anyone frequently predicts emergent properties precisely, but I still think that thoughtfully considering them is beneficial. There is a line in "Clean Architecture" to the effect that every architectural decision is akin to a shot in pool: you aren't merely trying to sink the ball, you're also trying to line up the next shot. This is true of decisions generally, and I think it's infinitely easier to do if you're thinking of navigating complex, dynamic systems rather than simply imagining "I'll do A because A –> B."

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

#37

Post by bobthechef » Fri, Apr 05, 2019, 2:26 AM UTC

munin wrote: post #18

Smart 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…

There is some truth to this. The future is impossible to predict. There is foolishness in failing to understand where predictions make sense and where they don't. We like to talk about "intelligence", but wisdom and the virtue of prudence are essential. Without the disciplining effect of the virtues, intelligence is thwarted. The degree and the kind of effort one puts into something is extremely important and requires a comprehension of the confluence of factors that are important to making the correct decision. This requires experience.

And as the saying goes, if you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans. But that isn't to say we shouldn't plans. This should not be taken as license for impulsive behavior and an irresponsible absense of forethought. But it should be understood that plans are often dependent on certain conditions holding, on the completeness of our knowledge, etc, thus requiring humility in the face of uncertainty and recognizing that plans must be adjusted or abandoned sometimes. There is no recipe for any of this and first principle are not enough.

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

#38

Post by FakeComments » Fri, Apr 05, 2019, 2:32 AM UTC

ausd123 wrote: post #6

blattimwind wrote: post #4

> 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…

As an interesting aside, the n-th partial derivatives form an n-cube:

For m variables, there are m first orders, m^2 second orders, etc. and most proofs about, eg convexity, amount to a proof over that shape.

The reason that n-th order reasoning about an m-dimensional problem is difficult is that it requires reasoning using m^n objects.

If you figure we can remember about ten things intuitively, that’s just enough for three dimensions and two derivatives — enough to do motion analysis.

But it’s leagues away from being able to do the second order of a ten-dimensional problem intuitively.

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

#39

Post by Spooky23 » Fri, Apr 05, 2019, 2:36 AM UTC

SquishyPanda23 wrote: post #28

busyant wrote: post #21

I think this article is saying: - 1st order thinkers primarily see causes and *direct* effects. - 2nd order thinkers frequently see causes and their *indirect* effects. I guess that seems like a reasonable idea. For what it's worth, the truly exceptional people I've met in life had a different quality. * When most people are presented with a difficult/challenging problem, they soon give up. * The most exceptional peo…

It's worth pointing out that blindly hammering away on the wrong problem is a failure mode for many intelligent people. The key is not just sticking to things, but also having enough taste to know when to drop a problem.

Sometimes. Forward motion is always important. In incident command scenarios, I’ve seen situations where people will sit around and wait... you need to move forward at all times or you get used to nothing happening.

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

#40

Post by spyckie2 » Fri, Apr 05, 2019, 2:46 AM UTC

busyant wrote: post #21

I think this article is saying: - 1st order thinkers primarily see causes and *direct* effects. - 2nd order thinkers frequently see causes and their *indirect* effects. I guess that seems like a reasonable idea. For what it's worth, the truly exceptional people I've met in life had a different quality. * When most people are presented with a difficult/challenging problem, they soon give up. * The most exceptional peo…

You have to split the title, which is marketing mumbo jumbo, from the article, which is fundamentally talking about decision making.

Smart decision making and persistent work is the X and Y axis of achievement.

Decision making (which broadly includes subjects like efficiency, policy, systems, problem solving, and design thinking) is the heart of efficiency gains for large organizations (not necessarily individuals, although there really shouldn't be a separation between the two).

Generally speaking, decision making falls into 2 categories - prioritization and policy. Prioritization is deciding what best to do out of the given options, and while policy (systems building) is building ecosystems that enable activity or work output.

2nd order thinking is the necessary requirement for policy/systems building. However, there's a lot more skills needed to enact good policy decisions, so this is just scratching the surface on the subject.