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Second-Order Thinking

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Re: Second-Order Thinking

#41

Post by Shugarl »

seanhunter wrote: post #18
jacknews wrote: post #2

Surely this is just 'thinking', instead of acting on impulse or gut-feel. Second-order thinking is thinking about thinking. eg, If we have a decision to make, first order thinking is analyzing the situation and making the decision. Second order thinking is deciding how to go about analyzing the situation, how to arrive at a decision, how to measure the outcome, etc.

The way Ray Dalio describes it in "Principles" is very helpful in my opinion. He says whenever you are trying to solve a problem, rather than just doing it you should imagine you are trying to build a machine to do it. And if you are trying to perform a task you should imagine you are writing the script for a movie in which the task is performed. The advantage of this second-order thinking is then you have a differen…

Ooh, interesting. Up until now, I'd just imagine myself solving the problem manually, then describe that with code. I'll try to imagine building a machine to see how it feels

Re: Second-Order Thinking

#42

Post by tomohawk »

noduerme wrote: post #24

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.

Cynicism is not a substitute for wisdom.

Re: Second-Order Thinking

#43

Post by gexla »

noduerme wrote: post #24

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. ;)

Re: Second-Order Thinking

#45

Post by verisimi »

I stopped here:

> It’s often easier to identify when people didn’t adequately consider the second and subsequent order impacts. For example, consider a country that, wanting to inspire regime change in another country, funds and provides weapons to a group of “moderate rebels.” Only it turns out that those moderate rebels will become powerful and then go to war with the sponsoring country for decades. Whoops.

The author is talking about thinking, and then uses a country to illustrate his point.

But... countries don't think! People think (animals too, to varying extents, perhaps plants) but not countries! Countries are a human CONCEPT. Its more possible that a stone could think than a concept!

This is -1 thinking in my book.

Re: Second-Order Thinking

#46

Post by evv555 »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #30

I use the predictive horizon model. It's not that there's a clear division between first order and second order thinking, it's that some people's ability to model consequences covers a narrow area, a few people can model successfully much further out, and a tiny minority can make astounding predictive leaps that reach far into the future. It's a continuous variable, not a Boolean. But it means most of the population…

>It's a continuous variable, not a Boolean.

My take on this: It's a multi-dimensional ordinal variable across the permutation of all possible domain combinations in which you can develop domain experience and synthetic thinking. The state space is so large that it looks continuous but on the other hand it's still ordered into stages/levels when looking at a smaller subset of domains in which cognitive development can happen. In effect it's not just having a wider horizon but having the right combination of horizons against which to synthesize for the given problem. Which isn't always obvious(to outsiders of the "correct" perspective) until it's hindsight.

Re: Second-Order Thinking

#47

Post by Aeolun »

hef19898 wrote: post #17

>> First-order thinking is fast and easy. Most definitely not. Thinking about the processes and long term effects takes a deeo understanding of things, time to properly think it through, experience to get it right and constabt adjustments. So basiy the opposite of fast and easy. Pretending to practice second -order thinking is fast and easy. As is writing a short blog about it.

Why would you write a long blog about it? The whole concept was explained in one paragraph. Everything after that is just trying to make the idea more appealing.

Re: Second-Order Thinking

#48

Post by shaftoe444 »

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…

Came here to post about Sowell and you've beaten me to it. I can't remember the exact quote but he's said that economics is just asking "and then what?".

Re: Second-Order Thinking

#50

Post by frodetb »

One should always strive to consider side effects as far as possible, but there are obviously limitations. The number of effects to consider increases exponentially with the order of thinking. Weighing them against each other becomes harder as well, as the scope increases and effects may no longer be tightly tied within the same domain. Probabilities necessarily become part of the equation, and they only become fuzzier the higher the level. A sufficiently high order of thinking becomes essentially to predict butterfly effects.

Not that this makes the task impossible, within some scope. Games like Chess have a similar kind of chaotic unpredictability, yet people get really good at thinking many moves ahead and ignoring dead-end paths. Higher order is better, as far as you can be confident. But the real world is huge, and full of unknowns, so higher order conclusions will be as highly up for debate.

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