Flagged for pretentious banality.
Second-Order Thinking
131–140 of 266 posts
Re: Second-Order Thinking
#132This 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 am not particularily familiar with the connotation of the term second-order-thinking , but to me it implies the somewhat mathematical meaning of it. The first order might be some value (e.g. a voltage) and the second order might be the rate with which that voltage changes and the third the rate with which this rate changes etc. To me this implies that thinking on a higher order is somewhat about stepping back and v…
Math isn't characterized by unmeasurable magic phrases
Higher order thinking is a trap phrase for people who want to sound deep by filling in details on the fly from their imaginations in the clothing of science
Nothing evidence based supports any of this
Re: Second-Order Thinking
#133Earlier quoted context omitted.
I generally skip articles from Farnam Street. Once I saw the source, I already knew what the comments would be. ;)
What’s the problem with FS?
Their podcast 'The Knowledge Project' is essentially a book tour for authors flogging their new book 'Framework/Mental Models to achieve X'.
Modern day magic beans to make you smarter.
Re: Second-Order Thinking
#134Quoted post unavailable.
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…
Also your opinion strikes me as very Japanese... and to argue why individual rights are important or why you should develop strong, objective, even antisocial anti-government personal opinions is, on a Japanese level, an entirely different conversation from me trying to convince a westerner that objective reality exists and has ethics whether we want it to or not.
Re: Second-Order Thinking
#135Zeynep's Law: "Until there is substantial and repeated evidence otherwise, assume counterintuitive findings to be false, and second-order effects to be dwarfed by first-order ones in magnitude."
https://twitter.com/zeynep/status/1478766408691556353?s=20&t...
Re: Second-Order Thinking
#136Applied Economics: Thinking Beyond Stage One by economist Thomas Sowell[0] explores this in good detail, applying it to political and economic policies, in his book. Housing policies, medicare and today's problem of defund the police can be better analysed if the framework of second-order thinking is used to view the pros and cons of such policies and their subsequent ramifications. Second-order thinking is a great m…
After subtracting the cost of the book, and time wasted times minimal wage, I highly suspect the average wealth generated by reading it is negative.
Re: Second-Order Thinking
#137Earlier quoted context omitted.
Ok, here's a real comment about Second Order Thinking. When trying to reduce my adiposity (lose fat mass), I get hungry. Everyone talks about diet and exercise. No one really talks about hunger. Dieticians talk about satiating foods - food that fills you up, but that is only one aspect. Last year I decided I need to find another way to experience hunger. Learning about this has greatly helped my efforts to get health…
also there's a difference between hunger and appetite, is there not? And with appetite (at least for me) what I mean mostly is wanting to have something sugary. However, whenever I give in to it, it gets even harder to stop then (not just in the minute, but also an hour later or two). Which is why eliminating the first step (giving in once) is the most important part... at least thats what I'm finding out right now.…
Yes, that's my experience too. Controlling your food environment is critical. Your brain will remember that you have snacks nearby. The farther away they are, the easier it is to forget them. I did a mental exercise where I put 3 jelly beans in front of me, and I tried to notice when I ate them. The first 3 or 4 times, I didn't notice at all. I only noticed when they were gone and I wanted another one.
I think sugar is a triple threat as far as hunger and appetite goes:
1. When you start to eat sugar, you want to eat more. Very sweet things were relatively rare, on an evolutional time scale, this is a completely natural response. There is strong research behind this idea.
2. If you have a high-sugar snack with low protein and low fiber, then your blood sugar spikes and then drops. That blood sugar drop feels terrible and the only way to 'fix' it is to eat sugar. Some people may be able to wait it out, but that can be dangerous in some cases. I'm not a doctor, talk to your doctor about how to handle hypoglycemia. Obviously it is best to not have a hypoglycemic episode in the first place. This is a well known metabolic process.
3. I don't know if there is research on this, but in my experience after I have high sugar snacks multiple days in a row a "monster" wakes up and my appetite gets very strong.
I do eat processed sugar still, but I limit it to one or two things a day.
Re: Second-Order Thinking
#138Earlier quoted context omitted.
What are the inputs to this framework? Are we going "What happens if we defund the police?" in isolation or are we asking what happens if we take the money from the police and put it into housing, into medicare, into other social programs? The answers you arrive at might be different. In fact if we extrapolate that line of reasoning out to the capitalist substrate of our economy we might find some surprising second,…
> or are we asking what happens if we take the money from the police and put it into housing, into medicare, into other social programs? The answers you arrive at might be different. There's two different questions. Combining the two will give you both answers you'd expect, not one or the other. And there's way too much going on to try and tackle both at the same time. You could say "defund police marginally increase…
As far as I know one of the arguments for defunding the police is that the police is used as a way for those with the ability to change things to externalize the consequences of their actions.
When for example a lack of housing leads to an increase in crime a well funded police prevents those who could increase housing from being affected by the crime and they will therefor not increase housing. Especially as they get many benefits from poverty like cheap labour, a decrease in competition and larger premiums on attractive real estate.
So yes I would say they are thinking about the second-order effects. At some point I might read some of Thomas Sowell's writings but from what I've seen so far he honestly seems more of a theologist than a scientist to me.
Re: Second-Order Thinking
#139This 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 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.
Don't forget the ability to snag readers by attributing their success to a simple rule that anybody can absorb in two minutes.
Re: Second-Order Thinking
#140Applied Economics: Thinking Beyond Stage One by economist Thomas Sowell[0] explores this in good detail, applying it to political and economic policies, in his book. Housing policies, medicare and today's problem of defund the police can be better analysed if the framework of second-order thinking is used to view the pros and cons of such policies and their subsequent ramifications. Second-order thinking is a great m…
The same concept is the gist of a lot of 'Basic Economics', also by Sowell.. Good intentions are not enough. Solutions to one problem will always create incentives for others to exploit.