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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)

#111

Post by empath75 »

T-A wrote: post #22
empath75 wrote: post #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.

http://theconversation.com/does-playing-chess-make-you-smart...

I don't think playing games makes you smarter. I think it practices a certain kind of thinking, and practicing thinking makes you better at that kind of thinking.

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

#113

Post by DoreenMichele »

ignoramous wrote: post #61
spyckie2 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The seven habits of highly effective people.

The Peter Principle

Books or articles on "planning backwards." Gantt charts get used a lot in, for example, construction. You need certain things to precede certain other things. You set a goal and end date and then start asking "What has to happen just before that? And just before that?" It is the reverse of asking "So, then what?"

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

#115

Post by 23d »

kjbfojbejib wrote: post #112

Slightly off-topic: what app is used to create low-fi sketches like the illustration in this article? I'd love to use these in my product work.

You could make images like these easily with Krita on most platforms or Procreate on an iPad/iPhone.

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

#116

Post by sevensor »

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.

I somewhat disagree with this idea -- it's important to drop unrewarding lines of enquiry, but more because you've reached the point where it becomes clear the answer would be boring than because it won't pay the bills. I mean, you have to get with the program sometimes and drop an interesting problem because you can't afford to continue working on it, but at that point it's not really dropped. It's just become an itch you can't scratch. If the problem is interesting enough, the pursuit is its own reward.

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

#117

Post by DoreenMichele »

dTal wrote: post #109
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…

Or if someone is an overweight, depressed shut-in, the treatment will be antidepressants and gastric bypass - when what they really need is a therapist/PT/buddy who plays sports and drags them out of the house to play squash. The medical system is not currently equipped to handle solutions like that. The inability to account for second-order effects seems to be a chronic failure of the large-scale systems we build. I…

In tribal culture, a Medicine Man is both a spiritual role and a medical role. There is no separation of your physical health from the larger picture of your life.

Even in modern medicine, physicians were historically de facto "village wise men." They largely have abandoned that role these days and it frequently goes bad places.

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

#118

Post by jerf »

coldtea wrote: post #98
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…

> 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. Nope, it is. Instead of sticking to a solution that only solves the immediate problem (hunger, first order), he changed the solution based on the adverse side-effects of going with the first solution (hunger solved, but health worse…

"Nope, it is. Instead of sticking to a solution that only solves the immediate problem (hunger, first order), he changed the solution based on the adverse side-effects of going with the first solution (hunger solved, but health worsened, second order)."

Yup. This just happens to be something that we get pounded into us (not without merit) a lot, so it's something that people understand fairly well.

Consequently, as a gateway into understanding higher-order thinking, it's really poor, because this "knowledge" has all but bypassed rational thinking at this point due to being repeated for us to the point that it's been internalized.

I'd say this is why the trivial examples are also uninteresting to people. If it's something obvious enough that everyone has figured it out, making it an accessible example, it also doesn't seem like higher order thinking.

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

#119

Post by bigbadgoose »

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…

Persistence is it. Quitting, by definition, takes you out of the potential winners domain.

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

#120

Post by [deleted] »

ignoramous wrote: post #61
spyckie2 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

[deleted]
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