This article reminds me of tree searches. One of the results we've found in various AI related investigations into the playing of games is that a good policy selects the action which maximizes the value of a future state. A good value for an action corresponds with where that action would eventually leave the agent. The article points out that a person will get better results by expanding the tree out to a depth beyond one. This is usually true. Interestingly, humans are real time and so we also experience contexts in which this is not true. Expansion takes precious time. Thus, one of the cognitive biases which sometimes steers us away from more optimal answers.
Second-Order Thinking: What Smart People Use to Outperform (2016)
51–60 of 143 posts
Re: Second-Order Thinking: What Smart People Use to Outperform (2016)
#52I 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.
It's worth pointing out that blindly hammering away on the wrong problem is a failure mode for many intelligent people.
Also, being right about something, but at the wrong time. That's the worst failure mode of all IMO.
Re: Second-Order Thinking: What Smart People Use to Outperform (2016)
#53This isn't second order thinking. Deciding to eat a salad when you're hungry instead of a candy bar because you value health over immediate satisfaction is discipline, not intelligence. You're still thinking linearly about the costs and benefits of the decision, you're just placing more emphasis on the longer term costs and benefits. Second order thinking refers to holistically looking at a situation to see emergent behaviors, which allows the intelligent to see things that are not intuitive. Second order thinking would be choosing a salad when you're hungry so that salad becomes associated with relieving hunger, thus making it easier to choose salads going forward, which will create a positive feedback loop keeping you on your diet. It's the self-interaction of the decision that makes it qualitatively more complex than first order thinking.
Re: Second-Order Thinking: What Smart People Use to Outperform (2016)
#54I'm not sure how much I agree with this article. In my opinion, most people's practical problems don't come from an inability to consider the later consequences of an action. They're either things completely beyond our control or they come from an inability to discipline ourselves to do the responsible thing given the consequences. People don't take the easy road because they're dumb. They take it because the hard ro…
> To be clear, I'm not some hard core libertarian that thinks everyone has made their bed and therefore should sleep in it. I think the struggle to conform one's life to productive positive decisions is ubiquitously difficult and just telling people their problems are their own fault has probably never helped a situation.
Not super relevant to the topic at hand, but I am a very hardcore libertarian, and I have to say that this is not an accurate representation of libertarian views.
It's not your fault, this seems to be a common misconception among many, even some of those who call themselves libertarian.
Libertarian philosophy does indeed stress personal responsibility as a part of voluntary interactions with others. However, this doesn't mean that a person's status is deterministic. Many of people's problem are not their own fault: hell, many of the problems are caused by the state, which is why we hate it. The problems that aren't caused by the state (scarcity, some inequality, externalities, etc) ate very difficult to solve, and state attempts to fix them usually result in even worse outcomes.
To bring it back around to second-order thinking, it's very important in politics especially to be able to see these unforseen consequences of political action. First-order thinking is how we end up with things like the PATRIOT Act and other emotionally-driven policies.
Re: Second-Order Thinking: What Smart People Use to Outperform (2016)
#55I think it is just one skill of critical thinking, why stop at second order when third order thinking is even better?
Re: Second-Order Thinking: What Smart People Use to Outperform (2016)
#56I think it is just one skill of critical thinking, why stop at second order when third order thinking is even better?
You have an opportunity to practice second order thinking in regards to using second/third order thinking here.
Re: Second-Order Thinking: What Smart People Use to Outperform (2016)
#57I 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.
> 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.
Agreed. In my original comment, I was trying to imply that those exceptional people did (ad you say) have enough "taste" to know when to stop, but I don't think I made that aspect clear.
The crystallographer I was talking about definitely failed more often than not, but I was always struck by his ability to keep floating reasonable ideas after the rest of us had reached what we thought was an intellectual cul-de-sac.
If you have ever read the transcript of Richard Feynman's speech "There's plenty of room at the bottom" [1] you get the same feeling--here's an incredibly bright person who can't seem to stop when he's told that "x is impossible."
I love this part of Feynman's speech: "The reason the electron microscope is so poor is that the f- value of the lenses is only 1 part to 1,000; you don't have a big enough numerical aperture. And I know that there are theorems which prove that it is impossible, with axially symmetrical stationary field lenses, to produce an f-value any bigger than so and so; and therefore the resolving power at the present time is at its theoretical maximum. But in every theorem there are assumptions. Why must the field be axially symmetrical? Why must the field be stationary? Can't we have pulsed electron beams in fields moving up along with the electrons? Must the field be symmetrical? I put this out as a challenge: Is there no way to make the electron microscope more powerful?"
Re: Second-Order Thinking: What Smart People Use to Outperform (2016)
#58I'm not sure how much I agree with this article. In my opinion, most people's practical problems don't come from an inability to consider the later consequences of an action. They're either things completely beyond our control or they come from an inability to discipline ourselves to do the responsible thing given the consequences. People don't take the easy road because they're dumb. They take it because the hard ro…
> To be clear, I'm not some hard core libertarian that thinks everyone has made their bed and therefore should sleep in it. I think the struggle to conform one's life to productive positive decisions is ubiquitously difficult and just telling people their problems are their own fault has probably never helped a situation. Not super relevant to the topic at hand, but I am a very hardcore libertarian, and I have to say…
Fair enough. Let me rephrase that. I'm not some hardcore puritan...
Re: Second-Order Thinking: What Smart People Use to Outperform (2016)
#59Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
You might like this video that shows emergent behaviour that I find fascinating:
https://youtu.be/gaFKqOBTj9w
Re: Second-Order Thinking: What Smart People Use to Outperform (2016)
#60Interesting article.
While there may be nature/nurture arguments here, IMO, first order thinkers are trained to be that way by society and markets. Someone who doesn’t think ahead is more “useful” as a consumer. Someone who doesn’t think ahead and question, gets along with others with less friction.