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Second-Order Thinking

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Re: Second-Order Thinking

#141

Post by noduerme »

nbzso wrote: post #124
noduerme wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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..…

You are wrong, about me. My higher education is theological. I have read some old books. I have a lot of Jewish friends, which have the ability to avoid "antisemitic" label when faced with a constructive question. I put ethical principles above any form of religion. And with the time, my view on religions is growing more negative than positive. Humans essentially are all the same. We have similar needs and dreams, to…

It's essentially the same word as "Farang" in Thai, just means anyone foreign or outside the ethnicity. The same thing in Chinese translates to "barbarian". I believe Christians have words like "heathen" and "infidel" and "witch" but most of those carry much more viciousness than "goy". Goyim are nonjews. What people do with that or say about them is on them. To be clear, the antisemitic patt of your post was the inference that we all have some opinions about non-Jews, and that calling them goyim was somehow an inside joke. It is literally just a word for anyone not Jewish. You amplified your suspicion of it with your references here but... It means nothing more. Do some white people call black people N** ? Do some white people sit around a bar talking about Kikes? (they do - and I look and act country enough to have heard it a hundred times). Oh yeah and those kikes call us goys... heh. I swear, I've never seen white pride so fearful as when they start ruminating on that little word. But I promise it's mostly just a phrase meaning not one of us. The barbarian overtones are put on by people who don't understand... in order to say "look! they're talking shit about all of us in their funny Yiddish language!" We're not. But thinking we are is basically a conspiracy theory, and that's what makes it antisemitic. Does that make sense?

Re: Second-Order Thinking

#142

Post by analyst74 »

MengerSponge wrote: post #135

Zeynep'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...

Isn't second order effects quite common and observable in software systems, in history, in economics and everything?

Re: Second-Order Thinking

#144

Post by Silverback_VII »

To me it is seems as the author is using new term for already known stuff not unlike the famous replacement of conscientiousness whit grit by Angela Duckworth.

I would say first-oder thinking replaces reactive thinking and second-oder replaces proactive or anticipatory thinking.

Re: Second-Order Thinking

#145

Post by mistermann »

DubiousPusher wrote: post #127

> For example, consider a country that, wanting to inspire regime change in another country, 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…

Errors being highly profitable for certain people probably doesn't help matters either.

Re: Second-Order Thinking

#146

Post by [deleted] »

rowanG077 wrote: post #3

> A lot of extraordinary things in life are the result of things that are first-order negative, second order positive. These are the hard cases. It's easy to consider second order effects if you have your solution, you just have to do it. Solutions often come way easier if the first order effects are positive. But if they are negative you are much less likely to even entertain that solution. Even if the higher order…

[deleted]

Re: Second-Order Thinking

#147

Post by noduerme »

pjmorris wrote: post #120
noduerme wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

I read the New Testament 2-4 times per year (and the Old Testament every year or so) and I'm convinced I don't understand him. But I'm trying.

I don't understand him and he's one of the most interesting figures of all time... and I say that without believing in his divinity. But I think the direct words are the truest part. If you can ever get your hands on the book "Jesus" by Henri Barbusse .. it is a humbling version of the book told through his own words. Barbusse was a Christian socialist who thought Jesus was basically a communist... but if you look at a lot of what Jesus said, he was mostly a communist (at least compared to the Jews at the time who wanted to suppress his ideas). of course the Jews always have to be the bad guys in this story, even though our only sin was saying this guy wasn't the messiah. But I do personally think that a lot of what he had to say was good and necessary. It was just widely misunderstood which led to thousands of years of my people being slaughtered... but he did make good points about humans, forgiveness, charity and work.

Re: Second-Order Thinking

#148

Post by steppi »

atoav wrote: post #86
kqr wrote: post #60

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 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…

In a way, I think you and your parent are both right. The missing link is that the analogy is based on multivariate series. First order deals with each variable in isolation. X1, X2, X3, . . . Second order contains interaction terms like X1 x X2 (The X1^2 can be thought of as a self interaction.) Third order would consider interactions between three variables and so on.

I’m not sure if this a false etymology, but it’s how I’ve always understood the term and I’ve met others who understand it this way as well.

I think the origin may be from linear regression with polynomial terms, which is very common in the medical sciences and social sciences. Terms like X1 x X2 are called interaction terms in that context and coefficients are often treated as quantifying the impact of a term on the result. Strictly speaking, the analogy would then be with any multivariate polynomial approximation, not just Taylor series.

Re: Second-Order Thinking

#150

Post by [deleted] »

rowanG077 wrote: post #3

> A lot of extraordinary things in life are the result of things that are first-order negative, second order positive. These are the hard cases. It's easy to consider second order effects if you have your solution, you just have to do it. Solutions often come way easier if the first order effects are positive. But if they are negative you are much less likely to even entertain that solution. Even if the higher order…

[deleted]
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