OK, so to follow up with the author of the piece and to maybe throw in a little 2nd order thinking into this equation: “Second-Order Thinking: What Smart Peopl

OK, so to follow up with the author of the piece and to maybe throw in a little 2nd order thinking into this equation: “Second-Order Thinking: What Smart People Use to Outperform” - the author makes a broad claim that all smart people use second order thinking to outperform those who aren’t smart. Questions: What makes the author credible, and what data / research does he/she have in order to support the claim? He/she cites Howard Marks as an example, but is Howard Marks really enough to support the claim for such a broad and generalized statement? What about the fact that even people who try to think deeply tend to get it wrong often-times, which has been shown to be true over and over again? Example: https://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/23/magazine/dont-blink-the-hazards-of-confidence.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all https://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/23/magazine/dont-blink-the-h... That’s not to say that I disagree with the premise – I think that in general, this piece puts forward a hypothesis that smart people are deep thinkers who think critically and deeply about the effects of their decisions, while those that aren’t so smart might not put such an effort in. There is some truth to the statement the author puts forward, but by no means is this the differentiating factor between smart people and the not-so-smart. I’m not an expert in this field either, but I’ve read a lot of stuff from Feynman, Einstein, and the geniuses of the field, and I find that some of the things which differentiate them from the rest are: 1. Deep curiosity. They were incredibly interested in finding out how things work / solving a problem. 2. Persistence: They worked hard to achieve what they wanted to achieve and didn’t give up. 3. They used their visual cortex / visual systems a lot. Tesla for example would have live simulated conversations with other people and build things inside of his head. Einstein is in the same boat - he would spend hours trying to visualize concepts. This makes total sense from my perspective. We have a heck of a lot more capacity to process information using our visual cortex than other areas in out brains. We can process something like 10 million bits per second vs. a much lower capacity in other brain areas. When you read silently for example, you're only processing around 45 bits per second. Apologies for the long write up here – I guess I might be over-analyzing things a bit, but I just don’t really see the point of this article, nor do I see it pointing out the real differentiating factors between those that are ‘smart’ and those that aren’t, and I think the author is making a very broad statement and doesn’t have any data to support his/her claim. Howard Marks also by the way is not a class above other investors. He still uses a value-based approach in a time where the value based strategy doesn’t really guarantee maximum returns. It doesn’t mean that he isn’t bright – he definitely is. I just don’t think that this presents enough evidence or data to support the generally broad claim made in the article.