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Second-Order Thinking

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Re: Second-Order Thinking

#81

Post by josephg »

brightball wrote: post #70
noduerme wrote: post #49

Quoted post unavailable.

Humility essentially the core virtue of Christianity, as well as active recognition of pride as a sin. If you dig deep, you’ll find that pride is the root of virtually every evil. I’m only pointing this out because of the perception of Christianity that you mention in your post. There’s a very big difference between what Reddit claims is Christian behavior and what the Bible actually claims. https://www.readnotmisled…

> If you dig deep, you’ll find that pride is the root of virtually every evil.

I think we live in the tension between being big and being small in the world. If you're big and you have bad judgement, you'll cause more harm than if you're small and have bad judgement. But being small is also an act of self abandonment. At its extreme, its no life at all.

Far too many people I know have no idea how to take up space with the confidence that they have something valuable to add to the world. They have important ideas - but don't back themselves and don't pursue them. We're all worse off when that happens.

Whats the point in learning ethics if you keep yourself powerless anyway?

I think cowardice and timidity are much bigger problems in modern society than pride.

Re: Second-Order Thinking

#82

Post by O__________O »

Albert Einstein said, “Intellectuals solve problems, geniuses prevent them”; he also likely was the main reason the US became aware of the need to enter the race to create nuclear weapons. [1]

At some point problems become impossible to avoid, especially if you’re biased [2] — though in the end, at a given scale, most problems (and their solutions) become as predictable as watching a man falling through the air. [3]

- Second-order thinking is not result of being smart, but not being lazy, biased, egotistical, etc.

_________

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Einstein–Szilard_letter

[2] https://youtube.com/watch?v=Va5T2KcYiOw

[3] https://youtu.be/XRr1kaXKBsU?t=49

Re: Second-Order Thinking

#83

Post by drekipus »

hamter wrote: post #69
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…

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 increases crime" and "increasing housing greatly reduces crime" but to what extent? And within what timeframes? Defunding the police could provide outcomes immediately, but to provide housing to a point where crime is reduced would most likely be a slow strong growth thing, that will take a generation or two to come about.

I'm not saying it's unimportant to look at both, but looking at them separately will be more realistic, and thankfully money is such an abstract resource that things can be separated like that.

> "We can find some surprising second and third order effects"

I think we don't quite want surprises when it comes to the safety and livelihood of many, and their generations.

It takes centuries to grow a forest and only a day to burn it down.

Re: Second-Order Thinking

#84

Post by chiefalchemist »

I'm currently reading "Thinking in Bets" by Annie Duke. I find her paradigm for decision making more accurate than this model.

1) She explains the physiology / psychology that leads to group think.

2) She proposes that decision-making is a spectrum. That there are - like poker, her profession - always knowns and unknowns.

3) She also has a solution for fighting groupthink and improving your post decision learning process via forming a truth-seek group.

Finally, I don't feel smarter === second-order. In fact, smartness is more likely to create a bias such that you'll act too soon due to overconfidence in your smartness.

Instead, second-order is about thoroughness, patience and the willingness to consider the full spectrum of possibilities. You don't have to have an above average IQ for that.

Re: Second-Order Thinking

#86

Post by atoav »

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 viewing the construct from a meta position. E.g. instead of thinking about how to address an imidiate problem by applying a bandaid, one order higher would be to think about the root causes and deal with the root of the problem. Even one order higher would be to think about which culture or systems of thinking allow for the good solving of such problems etc.

Re: Second-Order Thinking

#87

Post by vocram »

gexla wrote: post #43
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. ;)

What’s the problem with FS?

Re: Second-Order Thinking

#88

Post by Tarsul »

csours wrote: post #34
csours wrote: post #25

Hah, jokes on you! Second-Order thinking is what I use to torture my own brain and underperform.

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. (I wanted to keep eating like a tiny amount of sweets but... really, the body craves too much then. Better to stop full-stop.) I noticed that black tea, black coffee and apples (yes, they have natural sugar I know) reduce my apetite for sweets. Very helpful (although caffeine is its own kind of drug).

Re: Second-Order Thinking

#89

Post by noduerme »

josephg wrote: post #81
brightball wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Humility essentially the core virtue of Christianity, as well as active recognition of pride as a sin. If you dig deep, you’ll find that pride is the root of virtually every evil. I’m only pointing this out because of the perception of Christianity that you mention in your post. There’s a very big difference between what Reddit claims is Christian behavior and what the Bible actually claims. https://www.readnotmisled…

> If you dig deep, you’ll find that pride is the root of virtually every evil. I think we live in the tension between being big and being small in the world. If you're big and you have bad judgement, you'll cause more harm than if you're small and have bad judgement. But being small is also an act of self abandonment. At its extreme, its no life at all. Far too many people I know have no idea how to take up space wit…

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