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Second-Order Thinking

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Re: Second-Order Thinking

#241

Post by svnt »

mmmmpancakes wrote: post #239
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…

Conversely, there is a type of person who thinks everything worth knowing must require investment on behalf of the learner. It's not surprising this type of person is very common among the highly educated: school indoctrinates us with this belief. For these people everything is a struggle. They may even miss opportunities to easily pick up simple but useful ideas or skills because they have a closed mindset.

These are two perspectives from two people, one of whom had perhaps heard of this approach before, and one who perhaps had not.

The key distinguishing factor here in continuing education is not what you describe, though. As you become more educated, you realize there are more approaches to anything than you can functionally know at any one time, much less use.

This article essentially suggests you simply consider more consequences. Both useful in concept (if you’ve never thought of it), and totally useless in advanced practice due to the complexity of the system and your inability to predict the future accurately due to the nature of complexity.

The thing that is really under-appreciated by the less educated is the incredible amounts of information available in the written word that can be had with additional critical reading comprehension training and experience.

It was obvious before we got to the totally made-up success vs second-order thinking chart that this article was low effort and no substance. Quoting Ray Dalio was an early red flag. After the chart it was just sort of funny.

Re: Second-Order Thinking

#242

Post by mynameisash »

wnolens wrote: post #159
vocram wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What’s the problem with FS?

It's like Tim Ferris, filtered for the "intellectual" topics. Yawn

Yeah, I think that about sums it up. I started listening to Tim Ferris years ago because there were a few decent episodes, but I hit a breaking point after one-too-many horrendous episodes.

I discovered FS a couple years ago and have enjoyed some of them, but I'm very close to unsubscribing from this one. There have been a lot of low quality episodes as well as some negative quality: goofy web3 technobabble.

Re: Second-Order Thinking

#243

Post by entropicdrifter »

mrkstu wrote: post #184
yojo wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've taken to using a sort of internal version of "disagree and commit" - I have the little mental debate with myself, arrive at an ambiguous juncture, then pick an option (at random if necessary) and go all-in on it. If it turns out I was wrong there's usually still time to course-correct. Delaying or not making a decision is a choice itself, one that is almost always inferior to the options you're stuck between.

Yep, fail fast is often going to have a superior resolution time than time spent in deep analysis.

Plus you get more experience making decisions, more experience making quick decisions, and more problem-solving experience that way.

Re: Second-Order Thinking

#244

Post by paultopia »

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 wonder whether this is an example that in part also might cause us to question the utility of second/nth-order thinking? Because the more distant causal links are also estimated with more and more uncertainty (and necessarily so, insofar as uncertainty compounds across causal links), to the point where it becomes hard to weigh highly uncertain distant consequences against relatively certain near consequences?

Re: Second-Order Thinking

#245

Post by ineedasername »

Something to keep in mind, something often forgotten by those folks in meetings that are always “no, no, nope” to just about everything. Different personalities do it for different reasons, sometimes just to show how smart they are for seeing a negative second order consequence.

Regardless if why such a person does it though the thing to remember is that a negative second order impact is not at all a show stopper that prevents the initial action. The key to overcoming “no” people is precisely why you want to be a second/third order thinker: understand the negative n-order impacts and have a mitigation plan for them.

Nothing stops the “no” person faster than if you can preempt them completely or respond to their objections with “Sure Bob, you make a fantastic point. I’m glad you mentioned that because it allows us to cover a solution I have planned that we can review right now without having to take things offline and delay action on this.”

I’m sure some HN’ers may abhor the need for that sort of soft politicking and personality management but a diplomatic approach along these lines let’s both you and the “no” person keep face with less risk for confrontational dialogue, especially because Bob can be seen as a useful contributor as well.

(And yep, confrontation isn’t inherently a bad thing to be avoided at all costs, but the consequences of it are complicated and not always predictable. If Bob objects further without good cause, sure, roll out the pointed questions and firm requests for concrete reasoning.)

Re: Second-Order Thinking

#246

Post by coldtea »

philipov wrote: post #207
coldtea wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Hawaiians? I thought the second story was set in Jamaica.

It is. I snipped some parts of the story to simplify it for the comment, and left out an important step:

The Jamaican example "grabbed the attention of Hawaiian sugar cane planters, who also suffered from the rats. Bringing mongooses to Hawaii as natural pest exterminators seemed such an elegant idea. "

Re: Second-Order Thinking

#247

Post by HardlyCurious »

atq2119 wrote: post #234
HardlyCurious wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There's a subtlety here, though. It should be obvious that too much deficit spending has negative second order effects overwhelming the first order ones. (An extreme form of this: imagine having the government trying to spend quintillions each year -- that's clearly not going to work without some massive inflation.) It is not at all self-evident that the same is true for all deficit spending, even on an infinite time…

Yeah I agree, when I said 'large enough scales' I was referring to the amount of deficit spending in a fixed time, not how long that spending lasts.

One thing to remember here is that the only reason for us to even tax is to reduce the deficit. If we didn't care about the deficit we could just eliminate all taxes and make 100% of government spending deficit spending.

Re: Second-Order Thinking

#248

Post by barking_biscuit »

danw1979 wrote: post #19

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.

In my experience it's because they have both that they are able to do so.

Re: Second-Order Thinking

#250

Post by barking_biscuit »

andsoitis wrote: post #198

A great book, if you're interested in complex systems and feedback loops is Thinking in Systems by Donella Meadows. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3828902-thinking-in-syst...

If you like that and it really resonated with you, you might also find a lot of value in Drift Into Failure and Resilience Engineering: Concepts and Precepts

I've found the more I go down the rabbit hole on these particular topics, the faster I'm able to spot problems at a system wide scale in realtime and (try) course correct.

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