Has anyone read the book "The Most Important Thing", which is mentioned in the blog? If so, can you give a review of it?
Second-Order Thinking: What Smart People Use to Outperform (2016)
121–130 of 143 posts
Re: Second-Order Thinking: What Smart People Use to Outperform (2016)
#122I 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.
It has to be intelligent persistence, though. Only persist if you firmly believe that the potential reward outweighs the cost of continued effort.
Quitting a hopeless avenue of exploration frees you up to pursue greater chances of success elsewhere. It all depends on context.
Re: Second-Order Thinking: What Smart People Use to Outperform (2016)
#123Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 w…
Couldn't agree more here. I've been encountering this effect in rapid succession in the last couple of years as a new parent. First few weeks: Everything is new and you have no firm assumptions other than what you've observed from the outside of other families, so you try to build a new model on how your child behaves, how you should react and the routines needed to function as a family. A month in and every other mo…
Musk, in particular, appears to me to be refreshingly naive when confronted with a problem. His suggestions sometimes sound like something a kid would say, and that's not a bad thing.
Re: Second-Order Thinking: What Smart People Use to Outperform (2016)
#1241st order thinking dominates our politics and economics. And worse, there's no incentive for 2nd order thinking from our politicians, since the electorate doesn't go beyond 1st order. Further, pre-existing assumptions are usually backed by 1st order thinking, but not 2nd. Not a bad little book promoting 2nd order thinking in economics: https://fee.org/resources/economics-in-one-lesson/
> 1st order thinking dominates our politics and economics. At least in U.S. politics, we have a surplus of second order thinking. We can't get mundane immediate compromises made because people are worried about identities, factions, and trust issues, which are all second order concerns. For instance, it's not controversial to think that H1B visas are a mess, but legislation on specific immigration reform tends to get…
I think it's a tactic.
Politicians use whatever order thinking is most convenient to promote their ideas.
nth-order thinking is great for debate because you can use increasingly tenuous connections to justify your position.
Re: Second-Order Thinking: What Smart People Use to Outperform (2016)
#125This 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 thems…
> It is direct and without irony, sarcasm, or self reflection. Think slapstick comedy, or superhero movies. RDJ/Tony Stark would like a word with you.
Most modern superhero movies are indeed first level, bottom-of-the-barrel content: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7vfqkvwW2fs
Re: Second-Order Thinking: What Smart People Use to Outperform (2016)
#126Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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 w…
I wonder if there is a way to train yourself to have the intuition for quickly lifting those less apparent mental constraints in all situation.
Anyone have any thoughts on achieving this or resources. I recall some dual n back game posted from a website called gwern that supposedly helps speed up your recall time or how many items you can recall.
Re: Second-Order Thinking: What Smart People Use to Outperform (2016)
#127Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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…
Well, here's a non-trivial example, but still easy to follow, that describes second order effects quite well:
Re: Second-Order Thinking: What Smart People Use to Outperform (2016)
#128Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't know that this is true. I meet quite a lot of utopians (which are 1st order thinkers!), who assume the stated goal of a policy will be its effects. Perhaps this is about knowledge. In domestic situations where you know how to casually infer to more distant effects, 2nd order is easier. In politics, 2nd order is hard because people know very little and need to know very little (in their daily lives).
Politics is the poster entity for this. Stupid 1st order: Making jails as bad as possible will deter criminals which will make everyone safer. Good 2nd order: That doesn't work. How about we try rehabilitation and cutting the social and economic causes of crime? Evil 2nd order: You're a snowflake. Of course it works. [I know it's nonsense, but I'm going to lie to you for profit.] How are the shares in my prison servi…
But the “stupid first order” proposition is correct. If our policy was to brutally torture people for even the most minor infractions, and we enforced it very well, no one would ever commit a crime unless they were extremely confident that they could get away with it.
The problem is that this “cure” would be much worse than the disease.
Re: Second-Order Thinking: What Smart People Use to Outperform (2016)
#129I 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'm reading Gerald Weinberg's general systems book and it talks about second order thinking. Also, thinking in systems by Meadows is a great primer
Re: Second-Order Thinking: What Smart People Use to Outperform (2016)
#130This 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…
>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.
It seems to me that "holistically looking at a situation to see emergent behaviors" is still just linear thinking. What's being suggested is a "line of thought" that is longer than the average, but if your modus operandi is to make positive feedback loops for as many things as possible in your life, and/or be holistic, then it's no different from the first way of thinking that you illustrated. Whether or not someone thinks either way could simply depend on the degree to which that person is an extrovert/introvert.
Sorry, not trying to seem snarky or anything. The dichotomy you presented here just seemed interesting to me, maybe because I'm the type of person who is predisposed towards finding patterns in things.