Without having read the book, I don't think they are discounting the first. Only that what you call are second order effects are actually much very important in

Without having read the book, I don't think they are discounting the first. Only that what you call are second order effects are actually much very important in the long run. This becomes much clearer when you do a cross-cultural study of these effects. There are many poor countries, where the average person is roughly as mathematically/scientifically literate as a person in the richest countries in the world, but the philosophical/cultural/socio-political parts of those countries are much divorced from scientific truth.