121–130 of 266 posts
The book Thinking in Systems: A Primer by Donella H. Meadows is an excellent guide to help you with “long term thinking”.
This article, and some of the comments here, seem to confuse "second-order" with "long-term". Long-term just means doing the same analysis far out into the future: "If I spend less on maintaining software product $LEGACY, I will save money. If I continue to do this, I will save more and more money by each passing month." Second-order means discovering neighbouring causal links. "If I spend less on maintaining softwar…
I think people just interpret "future" very differently. For some "future" does include your second and third paragraph, since it is also a potential causality down the line. For others, it's only first paragraph example. Future for some is a branching tree, for others just a linked list.
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A related thing that seems unthinkable for many people now is how dynamic opinions are. Like, not intelectually, but from experience understanding that my world view currently firmly stands on a foundation that might very well fall apart some day... I feel that experience deeply shaped my character. Funnily, I think my opinions are now standing on even firmer grounds since I stopped expecting them to hold forever. Pe…
You may find it terrible, but I actually believe in objective reality. I believe I know good and evil when I see them... and I can do this without access to the supernatural or recourse to religion. I believe in better and worse outcomes for individuals and for societies. I believe some societies are better than others, because I've lived in 34 countries over 20 years and I can make honest comparisons about the pros and cons of each. Nowhere is perfect, but some actually are better -- objectively, if you believe that being expressive and embracing diversity and freedom of thought is a good thing. Personally I think good==complexity and evil==destruction, and so anything that kills life is destroying complexity that the universe demands, so is necessarily a kind of evil.
The Achilles heel of people younger than me is that they think opinions on the internet actually mean something... and the younger they are the less they seem to believe in the objective truth of the world. Call it the corrupting influence of Instagram, I guess. But I think it's due for a major backlash, because no one wants to have their morals dictated to them that way... and the objective world remains. It always remains. True things are true, false are false; evil is hypocrisy, and it's rampant. It is not a subjective, religious pronouncement.. it's a thing that is fucking right there.
2+2=4
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Sorry in advance, to be the goyim and ask: Do you have doubts in this privileged model of thinking, or you enjoy the power and then intellectualize the outcome. Because we as the stupid ones can "hurt ourselves" and we need the "wisdom" of historically proven "chosen" people with higher IQ, moral ground and knowledge. Right?
No, you are completely reading some bullshit sense of false superiority into what I said. Your comment is antisemitic but I'll address it as it stands as if you mean it honestly. I don't believe in any "chosen". I believe in what my people taught me, just like the Chinese believe in their own 5000 years of history, or the Czechs have pride for fighting back the Russians but I am not "chosen"...or better than anyone..…
/// Goy can be used in a derogatory manner. The Yiddish lexicographer Leo Rosten in The New Joys of Yiddish defines goy as someone who is non-Jewish or someone who is dull, insensitive, or heartless.[22] Goy also occurs in many pejorative Yiddish expressions:
Dos ken nor a goy - Something only a goy would do or is capable of doing.[22] A goy blabt a goy - "A goy stays a goy," or, less literally, according to Rosten, "What did you expect? Once an anti-Semite always an anti-Semite."[22] Goyisher kopf - "Gentile head," someone who doesn't think ahead, an idiot.[22][23] Goyishe naches - Pleasures or pursuits only a gentile would enjoy.[24] A goy! - Exclamation of exasperation used "when endurance is exhausted, kindliness depleted, the effort to understand useless".[25]
This just in from the eggheads: actions have consequences. I think it’s more likely that what Smart People actually have isn’t some supernatural common sense that allows them to iterate over cause and effect to a greater degree than Joe Stupid, but rather a set of specific domain experience and knowledge that allows them to infer that particular effects follow particular events about which they are reasoning.
I once had a project manager that didn't do second order thinking at all. He saw our current state and the finish line. To him there was just one simple step between now and completing the project called "just do all the stuff". I tried explaining the Coastline Paradox[0] to him but it just didn't stick. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coastline_paradox
Just keep repeating yourself. At one point someone will come with this great idea about the coastline paradox, and everyone will get it.
Happend to me a few times. Don't know how many times I stole someone elses idea like this :D.
My problem with n-order thinking are in-grained pessimism, and lots of imagination. Perfect recipe for never doing anything.
I would propose a different observation regarding international affairs which is that it is simply a problem space above human capacity to solve. I say this because I believe this author is incorrect that the people making foreign policy decisions are not thinking "smart enough". I believe they spend a good deal of their time "gaming out" their decisions, building computer models which justify their decisions and contemplating exactly the kind of second and third order consequences they're talking about.
Rather the problem is precisely their logification of the problem. They are too smart and get caught up in their own labyrinth of logic. A lot of the bad choices countries have made over the years could be stopped by some very basic first order thinking. Things like, 99% of the time contributing to violence in a country is bad and leaves the people there more extreme and more violent. (Yes I grant you fighting Hitler was good.)
The Rand Corporation's failure over the years to provide good outcomes is almost a perfect example of how an attempt to build a better diplomat has utterly failed. In my opinion there are just classes of problems which in practical terms are unsolvable and it is wise therein to take direct action on the few things you can be certain of and scrupulous about the rest.
So the article is silly as far as that goes.
I think that making a habit of consciously reviewing your assumed consequences _is_ a bit of wisdom.
But the article is conflating IQ and that habit.
Also, I think the biggest difference maker in strategic planning is usually in the amount of relevant experience in a domain.
Aaaand third order thinking is skimming this and knowing it's about as deep as the conversation I tried to have at a bar three hours ago when I explained I was just playing "devil's advocate" to someone who was already playing devil's advocate. Whenever I get desperate enough to start a blog full of deep thoughts that only gets posted here, watch out HN.
I generally skip articles from Farnam Street. Once I saw the source, I already knew what the comments would be. ;)
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A healthy skepticism can be a useful way to avoid vacuous thinking.
Skepticism requires critical thinking and engagement. You can't be a proper skeptic about something without taking the time to understand the domain you're being skeptical of, approach it in good faith from first principles as much as possible, and accept criticism in kind. Most people just won't bother, because cynicism and snark provide a better endorphin hit, and the internet has trained people to associate that f…