Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

fs.blog

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 143 posts

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

#61

Post by ignoramous »

spyckie2 wrote: post #40
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, a…

I humbly presume that you are familiar with topic at hand, and so, if you please, can you elaborate more on 'scratching the surface' part? I'm genuinely curious about other aspects of policy/systems-building, as it were. Pointers to blog posts or books should be enough, as well. Thanks.

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

#62

Post by seleniumBubbles »

alan-crowe wrote: post #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"

That is such a fantastic article. It’s timeless: it was published in 1850, but it remains more relevant than ever.

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

#63

Post by kqr »

busyant wrote: post #57
SquishyPanda23 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 abou…

I think the deeper explanation here is that unusually clever people know how to locate the unquestioned assumptions and have no problem throwing them out. Or put another way, they ask questions of the form, "I know this sounds dumb at first, but hear me out. Why don't we..."

Most problems come with a slew of constraints we take for granted, and then a set of constraints we consciously impose on the solution because we think it helps. Most reasonably bright people try lifting those conscious constraints, but rarely touch the less apparent ones.

I think that more neatly explains what you both are going for with "gives up too soon" (not identifying all constraints), "hammering away" (also investigating non-obvious constraints), yet "have enough taste to stop" (there are no more constraints to lift).

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

#64

Post by mStreamTeam »

whatshisface wrote: post #31
ilaksh wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That's why people make multiple plans and backup plans

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

#65

Post by seleniumBubbles »

sverige wrote: post #29
mrhappyunhappy wrote: post #19

Maybe world policy makers should think to the nth order before making bad policies.

I think they do, but I suspect that their goals are bad, which is why we have the world we have now.

It’s worth noting here that an astonishing number of prominent politicians and politically-involved elites are still avowed (and publicly acknowledged) Malthusians. So when trying to understand their actions, keep in mind, their goals may in fact be to “reduce the global population to a more sustainable level.”

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

#66

Post by zebraflask »

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.

Agreed. I have seen this plenty of times.

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

#67

Post by henryw »

The first quote by Ray Dalio is from his most excellent book https://www.amazon.com/Principles-Life-Work-Ray-Dalio/dp/150...

I've listen to the section for personal principles on audible 5 times now, and I will probably keep repeating it at least a couple times a year.

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

#68

Post by Pamar »

DoreenMichele wrote: post #43
mschuller wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Second order thinking was thought further by Hans Jonas [1], a philosopher known for his contribution to environmentalism. In his book "The Imperative of Responsibility"[2] he argues that because of our technological breakthroughs (e.g. medicine) it's so easy to make impacts beyond your control that thinking through whatever you do has to become the core of a new ethic. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Jonas [2…

I'm an environmental studies major. It's been very helpful in trying to develop mental models for thinking about my health issues.

This is interesting: can you provide some examples?

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

#69

Post by rahulrrixe »

jjk166 wrote: post #53

This 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…

But he gave a thought to leave chocolate and take Salad. How do you think this got triggered in his brain. Discipline comes after you have formed rules by seeing it's effect either by you or learning from others.

Second-order thinking is too abstract: some time thing which is obvious for you might not be for other e.g. binary search is not always a good option, it can be obvious to you (here you are an intelligent person with acquired knowledge) and for novice to this concept; their second order thinking would be to find out what Binary Search is and then why not it is always good to use it.

I think second order is trying to convey to look beyond what you have good in your first glimpse and try to connect dots. I haven't done much study on it but that what I get from it.

Post reply on HN