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Second-Order Thinking

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Re: Second-Order Thinking

#221

Post by iAm25626 »

coldtea wrote: post #200
atoav wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

It's simply about looking further down up the casual chain, not stopping at the initial cause-effect: thinking about the effects of effect themselves (and, in third order, the effects of the effects of the effects, and so on). A simple example of failing to do so and only considering the first level cause-effect: "The British government, concerned about the number of venomous cobras in Delhi, offered a bounty for eve…

"Simpsons did it": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LuiK7jcC1fY i wonder at what point does game theory comes into play instead of second order thinking?

Re: Second-Order Thinking

#222

Post by HardlyCurious »

atq2119 wrote: post #191
smckk wrote: post #38

Applied 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…

Ironically, a lot of economics sound-bites are all about ignoring first order effects in favor of questionable second order effects. I'm mostly thinking here about deficit spending discussions, where it's popular to inject worry about second-order effects creating a drag on the economy, e.g., crowding out. Meanwhile, it completely ignores the fact that the first-order effects are almost always all positive for the ec…

Well, logically the second order negative effects of deficit spending must overcome the beneficial first and second order effects on large enough scales.

Otherwise we could just deficit spend ourselves into perpetual prosperity.

Re: Second-Order Thinking

#223

Post by the_cat_kittles »

this is a type of article and thinking that is appealing to people because its very easy to understand, and appears useful. theres no barrier to entry here because theres no corpus of knowledge required or demonstration of skill. just say something that sounds kind of coherent and simple, that probably reinforces what people already believe.

it might seem overly negative to care about this. maybe it is. but this website describes itself as "Brain Food. A weekly newsletter packed with timeless insights and actionable ideas from a wide range of disciplines." its selling the idea that you can gain something from reading 45 second articles that say hardly anything. this kind of stuff is for people who are too lazy or dont have enough time to learn something for real, and i think its worse than useless

Re: Second-Order Thinking

#224

Post by the_cat_kittles »

jonnycomputer wrote: post #193

Important, but our knowledge of higher order consequences will usually be more uncertain and plagued by ambiguity, where we don't even know the probabilities involved. My guess is that this can be a recipe for indecision and paralysis, i.e. you need to apply n-order thinking to the decision process itself, with humility about what you know, what you can know, and your own biases, which likely will have a bigger effec…

what are you talking about? the waterfall method is the only way to go

Re: Second-Order Thinking

#225

Post by jollyllama »

rob_c wrote: post #55

Did someone just make a serious blog post to describe thinking. One that is deadpan not philosophical and supposed to (by the authors view) be helping people? If this is new to people it would explain 99% of the most horrific security vulnerabilities I think I've seen in recent years.

Yes. The world around you starts to make more sense when you realize that second order effects are virtually never considered by the majority of people. A sizeable portion of them are not even capable of doing so.

Re: Second-Order Thinking

#226

Post by imwillofficial »

For want of a nail the shoe was lost.

For want of a shoe the horse was lost.

For want of a horse the rider was lost.

For want of a rider the message was lost.

For want of a message the battle was lost.

For want of a battle the kingdom was lost.

And all for the want of a horseshoe nail.

Re: Second-Order Thinking

#227

Post by decebalus1 »

the_cat_kittles wrote: post #223

this is a type of article and thinking that is appealing to people because its very easy to understand, and appears useful. theres no barrier to entry here because theres no corpus of knowledge required or demonstration of skill. just say something that sounds kind of coherent and simple, that probably reinforces what people already believe. it might seem overly negative to care about this. maybe it is. but this webs…

I think you'd be interested in this https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32335165

Re: Second-Order Thinking

#228

Post by paulpauper »

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…

It boils down to "actions have consequences," some of which may be unfavorable. And those consequences have other possible consequences. It grows exponentially. So you need to figure out how to anticipate these consequences.

Re: Second-Order Thinking

#230

Post by MengerSponge »

analyst74 wrote: post #142
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?

Yes. Zeynep isn't saying "second order effects don't exist". She's saying "don't overthink it".

Consider the public health nightmare we've been stuck in for the last three+ years. Instead of giving direct and useful guidance, people worry about how people will react to guidance and make second order arguments against the basic guidance that would actually help.

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