3 ms·

> The ability to think through problems to the second, third, and nth order—or what we will call second-order thinking for short—is a powerful tool that superch

> The ability to think through problems to the second, third, and nth order—or what we will call second-order thinking for short—is a powerful tool that supercharges your thinking. Clearly it should be called higher-order thinking.

ilaksh 8y ago
Just "planning" seems adequate to me.
- whatshisface 8y ago
  If the author called it planning then everyone would realize that they had already heard of it... People might also realize that with every additional step of reasoning the chance that you got it right decays exponentially.
  - mStreamTeam 8y ago
    That's why people make multiple plans and backup plans
- karmakaze 8y ago
  Plans for the most part execute the 'happy path'. That's wny everything's late and over-budget. Contingincy planning captures 2nd order and that's about as deep as it ever goes.
ausd123 8y ago
This is already a similar concept - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Higher-order_thinking https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Higher-order_thinking I would be quite happy to see these kinds of concepts rolled into one. Looking back, most times I heard "higher order thinking" at school, I feel like they meant "thinking at a higher level of abstraction" (as I would describe it now). You could make an argument that the kind of "nth derivative thinking" identified here is similar though.
- FakeComments 8y ago
  As an interesting aside, the n-th partial derivatives form an n-cube: For m variables, there are m first orders, m^2 second orders, etc. and most proofs about, eg convexity, amount to a proof over that shape. The reason that n-th order reasoning about an m-dimensional problem is difficult is that it requires reasoning using m^n objects. If you figure we can remember about ten things intuitively, that’s just enough for three dimensions and two derivatives — enough to do motion analysis. But it’s leagues away from being able to do the second order of a ten-dimensional problem intuitively.

ilaksh 8y ago

Just "planning" seems adequate to me.

whatshisface 8y ago
If the author called it planning then everyone would realize that they had already heard of it... People might also realize that with every additional step of reasoning the chance that you got it right decays exponentially.
- mStreamTeam 8y ago
  That's why people make multiple plans and backup plans
karmakaze 8y ago
Plans for the most part execute the 'happy path'. That's wny everything's late and over-budget. Contingincy planning captures 2nd order and that's about as deep as it ever goes.

ausd123 8y ago

This is already a similar concept - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Higher-order_thinking https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Higher-order_thinking I would be quite happy to see these kinds of concepts rolled into one. Looking back, most times I heard "higher order thinking" at school, I feel like they meant "thinking at a higher level of abstraction" (as I would describe it now). You could make an argument that the kind of "nth derivative thinking" identified here is similar though.

FakeComments 8y ago
As an interesting aside, the n-th partial derivatives form an n-cube: For m variables, there are m first orders, m^2 second orders, etc. and most proofs about, eg convexity, amount to a proof over that shape. The reason that n-th order reasoning about an m-dimensional problem is difficult is that it requires reasoning using m^n objects. If you figure we can remember about ten things intuitively, that’s just enough for three dimensions and two derivatives — enough to do motion analysis. But it’s leagues away from being able to do the second order of a ten-dimensional problem intuitively.