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Second-Order Thinking

• m3kw9 4y ago
  Is this the same as derivative thinking?
• jacknews 4y ago
  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.
  • iopq 4y ago
    Second order thinking would be thinking about processes, rather than the situation. So if you have a problem like in the article, you don't like the current government. First order thinking is fund the rebels. Second order thinking is thinking about which countries have had good outcomes from government change and which countries had bad outcomes, which countries had a gradual power turn over, which countries end up friendly to you. By quantifying what outcomes are most favorable and finding out the prerequisites, we can then formulate a policy that is consistent for many cases. Then you can eliminate first order thinking, since you have already done a better job in the general case and you can clearly see funding the rebels is far outside the parameters of your general policy, so it's a waste of time or worse.
  • seanhunter 4y ago
    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 different frame of reference. You can for example compare the actual outcome to the script of the movie you imagined before. You also have more obvious agency and different choices. When you are designing your machine you are making concious choices and evaluating your options more specifically than if you are just plowing ahead with the obvious route. The machine analogy also means you can focus more on how you make the task automated, sustainable etc. So for example in tech rather than just doing a job, you write a script so next time the job becomes trivial, or (better) you automate the processes so you don't need to do the job again.
    • Shugarl 4y ago
      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
      • l33t2328 4y ago
        For me, building a machine is identical to writing code. I can’t really see a difference.
        • seanhunter 4y ago
          I personally don’t see a difference either. Dalio isn’t a programmer - he’s an asset manager who just tries to think in a systematic way. One of the reasons I like this analogy is that it resonates with me as a programmer.
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• rowanG077 4y ago
  > A lot of extraordinary things in life are the result of things that are first-order negative, second order positive. These are the hard cases. It's easy to consider second order effects if you have your solution, you just have to do it. Solutions often come way easier if the first order effects are positive. But if they are negative you are much less likely to even entertain that solution. Even if the higher order effects positives far outweigh the first order negatives.
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• jlajna 4y ago
  This is just an advert for some guy's book, isn't it?
  • jmeister 4y ago
    It’s not actually. What is the point of this comment?
    • thrown_22 4y ago
      At first order it isn't, but at second order it is.
  • eska 4y ago
    He provides examples, a thorough logical argument, and practical advice without a single ad in between. I don’t know why you would say that.
    • actionfromafar 4y ago
      Second order ad. :)
  • jll29 4y ago
    I'm curious how they wrote 3 volumes about that - has anyone read it?
    • rob_c 4y ago
      the result of the 1st book is you need to read the second
  • dna_polymerase 4y ago
    After a short intro, the first sentence is: "In his exceptional book, The Most Important Thing, Howard Marks explains the concept of second-order thinking, which he calls second-level thinking." The book is linked to Amazon and it looks like it is an Amazon Affiliate link.
• hkon 4y ago
  Thinking n moves ahead as its usually called
• iopq 4y ago
  This is a first-order article on second-order thinking
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• 12ian34 4y ago
  This is just "long term thinking". I would say the article isn't worth reading. But at least, it's a good reminder to focus on thinking about the long term consequences of actions/decisions.
  • forgotusername6 4y ago
    Not necessarily. It describes 2nd order and above in contrast to the immediate effects of a decision. The 2nd order effect may be in 5s time or even immediate but not a direct consequence of the original action.
    • rob_c 4y ago
      how is that not long term thinking?
      • matwood 4y ago
        Because second order can also be immediate, it just may not be a direct intention of the action.
        • rob_c 4y ago
          I... If we're going to argue the temporal component of planning you better not look back over the last 3 years...
      • Ensorceled 4y ago
        > > The 2nd order effect may be in 5s time > how is that not long term thinking? What does "long term" mean to you ... 5s (i.e. 5 seconds) is pretty short term to me.
        • rob_c 4y ago
          Long term being further down the line, i.e. net result in 5 years is still the same regardless of how quickly things evolve. I'd argue that because happens in 5min that's an immediate effect regardless of if it happens after something or not. How is there any higher order evolution to that? Are you trying to argue that people can't cope with time in a plan therefore it must be a higher order thinking to understand the rapid evolution of something?
• jll29 4y ago
  My first thought was: "What then?" - the question the author would like us to always ask - is implied in what game theory investigates, including a solid mathematical theory for accounting wins and losses (example: repeat prisoner's dilemma, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CO3-796fGv8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CO3-796fGv8 - free video).
• hef19898 4y ago
  >> 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.
  • another-dave 4y ago
    > 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. Isn't what your describing second-order thinking though? For example — "I'm hungry therefore I'll order a takeaway" is an easy decision, if you ignore any second order effects & consequences (e.g. impact on your health/finances). It's layering in second (and third, fourth) order effects that requires the time to think through, experience, etc.
    • april_22 4y ago
      Agree, it's usually thinking about the consequences, things that don't seem clear directly that makes second order thinking hard.
  • Aeolun 4y ago
    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.
• danw1979 4y ago
  This just in from the eggheads: actions have consequences. I think it’s more likely that what Smart People actually have isn’t some supernatural common sense that allows them to iterate over cause and effect to a greater degree than Joe Stupid, but rather a set of specific domain experience and knowledge that allows them to infer that particular effects follow particular events about which they are reasoning.
  • jdmoreira 4y ago
    > This just in from the eggheads: actions have consequences. Everyone can understand that actions have (first-order) consequences. The problem is that most people stop there. But consequences also have consequences, those are second-order consequences. And you can follow the reasoning to nth-order consequences. The better game players (chess for example but can applied to anything) simply go deeper in the search tree and try to average out all outcomes... that's what higher-order thinking is. You go deeper in the tree and you backtrack.
    • crygin 4y ago
      This is not higher-order thinking (insofar as such exists). The search tree is first-order -- in a sufficiently complex game that the search tree cannot be fully examined, the heuristics necessary to perform at a high level without the need to explore the search tree are the second order. The third order is left as an exercise to the reader.
  • theshrike79 4y ago
    I once had a project manager that didn't do second order thinking at all. He saw our current state and the finish line. To him there was just one simple step between now and completing the project called "just do all the stuff". I tried explaining the Coastline Paradox[0] to him but it just didn't stick. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coastline_paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coastline_paradox
    • noduerme 4y ago
      no no.. that's why those guys make the big bucks. Turning creative/intelligent work into blobs that can be measured and priced is a highly paid job reserved for a certain type of exceptionally dopey, incapable jackass.
• ChrisMarshallNY 4y ago
  > Second-order thinking takes a lot of work. It’s not easy to think in terms of systems, interactions, and time. Experience helps a lot, there. After having your ass handed to you a few times, second-order thinking basically becomes automatic. Just sayin’… ”Good judgment comes from experience. Experience comes from bad judgment.” -Attributed to Nasrudin, but made famous by Will Rogers
• noduerme 4y ago
  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.
  • jrh206 4y ago
    Indeed. Unfortunately the article lost me when I saw the graph of "extent to which you consider second order and subsequent consequences" vs "odds of success".
    • noduerme 4y ago
      Aren't totally meaningless graphs the best though? ;) You're just bitter because you're already fourth order thinking... you assessed the whole thing as a dumbass waste of time. Also, never show people graphs when /ok, never mind
      • mellavora 4y ago
        especially when the graph has a slope so you can calculate the derivative as an example of 2nd order thinking.
        • jrh206 4y ago
          Which, by the way, seems to be heading towards infinity, which isn't right at all.
  • tomohawk 4y ago
    Cynicism is not a substitute for wisdom.
    • noduerme 4y ago
• csours 4y ago
  Hah, jokes on you! Second-Order thinking is what I use to torture my own brain and underperform.
  • csours 4y ago
    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 healthy. I highly recommend "The Hungry Brain" and some time with a Cognitive Behavior Therapist if you have had repeated difficulty in losing weight. Tell your therapist you want to change your relationship with food and learn how to handle the sensations of hunger. These are easy words to say, but to really change your learned behaviors takes a lot of time and effort.
    • Tarsul 4y ago
      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).
      • csours 4y ago
        Yes, that's my experience too. Controlling your food environment is critical. Your brain will remember that you have snacks nearby. The farther away they are, the easier it is to forget them. I did a mental exercise where I put 3 jelly beans in front of me, and I tried to notice when I ate them. The first 3 or 4 times, I didn't notice at all. I only noticed when they were gone and I wanted another one. I think sugar is a triple threat as far as hunger and appetite goes: 1. When you start to eat sugar, you want to eat more. Very sweet things were relatively rare, on an evolutional time scale, this is a completely natural response. There is strong research behind this idea. 2. If you have a high-sugar snack with low protein and low fiber, then your blood sugar spikes and then drops. That blood sugar drop feels terrible and the only way to 'fix' it is to eat sugar. Some people may be able to wait it out, but that can be dangerous in some cases. I'm not a doctor, talk to your doctor about how to handle hypoglycemia. Obviously it is best to not have a hypoglycemic episode in the first place. This is a well known metabolic process. 3. I don't know if there is research on this, but in my experience after I have high sugar snacks multiple days in a row a "monster" wakes up and my appetite gets very strong. I do eat processed sugar still, but I limit it to one or two things a day.
• quickthrower2 4y ago
  The word here is: Strategy
• TheOtherHobbes 4y ago
  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 literally cannot see consequences that seem obvious to someone with a wider reach. Asking "and then what" won't change this, because if your modelling ability is poor you'll just get a longer list of wrong predictions. It's a mix of native ability (IQ helps, but it's not a sole determinant), domain specific experience, and experience with synthetic thinking - the ability to filter and combine multiple trends, as opposed to purely analytical thinking which usually looks at one or two.
  • noduerme 4y ago
    In human terms, my older brother who I learned to code from (he left me his TRS-80/100 and the BASIC manual when I was 8, plus some Springsteen tapes, and gave up programming to become a federal prosecutor) told me: Your problem is you can never look two weeks into the future. Which is now exactly the same thing I think about kids a decade younger than me. It's true, but they're not dumb, they just have to live awhile.
    • april_22 4y ago
      “Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.” - Søren Kierkegaard
  • gostsamo 4y ago
    I call it the minority report problem.
  • evv555 4y ago
    >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.
• jo_beef 4y ago
  The whole article can be summed up to : 1. Think of something 2. Return to that thought from time to time 3. Repeat
• ekianjo 4y ago
  Is this supposed to be deep or something? That seems on the contrary extremely shallow and devoid of any insight.
  • noncoml 4y ago
    Totally r/iamverysmart vibes
  • iamacyborg 4y ago
    Well, it is Farnam Street…
• smckk 4y ago
  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 mental model to have and helps us address some of the cognitive biases that get in our way when making choices. To me this form of thinking is evident in chess, the evaluation necessary to make a single move gets us to look at the consequences after the third and fourth move before a final decision is made. I believe when the time allows for it we should really consider the future ramifications of our actions before making a move. [0] https://www.amazon.com/Applied-Economics-Thinking-Beyond-Stage/dp/0465003451 https://www.amazon.com/Applied-Economics-Thinking-Beyond-Sta...
  • shaftoe444 4y ago
    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?".
  • hamter 4y ago
    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, third+ order effects.
    • drekipus 4y ago
      > 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.
• phtrivier 4y ago
  My problem with n-order thinking are in-grained pessimism, and lots of imagination. Perfect recipe for never doing anything.
  • acka 4y ago
    Isn't realizing and dealing with the risk of procrastinating when n-order thinking about a problem then a classic example of n+1-order thinking?
• Shugarl 4y ago
  Is it me, or does everyone here have a different definition of what n-th order thinking means ?
  • abdulhaq 4y ago
    A) second order thinking sounds clever so we all agree it's good,though we're unsure what it is B) my way of thinking is advanced and clever Ergo C) second order thinking is the way I think
• verisimi 4y ago
  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.
  • trasz 4y ago
    >countries don't think! People think “People don’t think, their neurons think”
• noduerme 4y ago
  • brightball 4y ago
    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.org/p/the-is-it-christian-litmus-test https://www.readnotmisled.org/p/the-is-it-christian-litmus-t...
    • noduerme 4y ago
      • brightball 4y ago
        I think the root of the perception that Christians don’t understand is that many haven’t read the Bible. Taking a single verse out of context to suit a purpose rather than reading all of the surrounding text is a pretty big problem.
      • nbzso 4y ago
        Sorry in advance, to be the goyim and ask: Do you have doubts in this privileged model of thinking, or you enjoy the power and then intellectualize the outcome. Because we as the stupid ones can "hurt ourselves" and we need the "wisdom" of historically proven "chosen" people with higher IQ, moral ground and knowledge. Right?
        • noduerme 4y ago
          No, you are completely reading some bullshit sense of false superiority into what I said. Your comment is antisemitic but I'll address it as it stands as if you mean it honestly. I don't believe in any "chosen". I believe in what my people taught me, just like the Chinese believe in their own 5000 years of history, or the Czechs have pride for fighting back the Russians but I am not "chosen"...or better than anyone... every group of people have grandfathers who taught them how to survive and how to assess the world. That's all. I'm actually just sharing how I see it.. but I don't think I'm better than anyone else let alone it's my job to moralize, or feel power over anyone. I'm just here to express my opinion like everyone else. By the way, can a Muslim have an opinion about Jesus? They sure do. Can a Buddhist? Yes. Well... the man was a Jew and most of the history of antisemitism revolves around Christians pretending he wasn't a rabbi. So this ain't chosen anything I'm just saying what it is... the man was a Jewish rabbi who rebelled in a few good ways against the Hebrew norms... he was a rebel and I admire what he said and did. This is not scorn on goyim. Frankly if you want it? I don't know what you Romans are still doing worshipping a Jew what, in the year 2022, but that's between you and God
• frodetb 4y ago
  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.
• de6u99er 4y ago
  A lot of times I face the problem that others can't grasp what comes intuitively to me. Sometimes years later they let me know that I was right. But most of of them don't remember any more. E.g. 30 years ago I had a lenghty discussion with my fellow electronics engineering classmates. I predicted then that in the future computers will consist of a single chip that comes with everything necessary and is going to be individually configurable for each customer. The others could not even imagine something like this happening. If we look at smartphones (ARM) and modern computers (Apple Silicon) this is exactly ehat is happening. Apart from power supply, interfaces and storage, everything including GPU and Ram is on one chip.
• pella 4y ago
  My favorite example: The cobra effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perverse_incentive https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perverse_incentive "The term cobra effect was coined by economist Horst Siebert based on an anecdote of an occurrence in India during British rule. The British government, concerned about the number of venomous cobras in Delhi, offered a bounty for every dead cobra. Initially, this was a successful strategy; large numbers of snakes were killed for the reward. Eventually, however, enterprising people began to breed cobras for the income. When the government became aware of this, the reward program was scrapped. When cobra breeders set their now-worthless snakes free, the wild cobra population further increased"
• rob_c 4y ago
  Did someone just make a serious blog post to describe thinking. One that is deadpan not philosophical and supposed to (by the authors view) be helping people? If this is new to people it would explain 99% of the most horrific security vulnerabilities I think I've seen in recent years.
  • jollyllama 4y ago
    Yes. The world around you starts to make more sense when you realize that second order effects are virtually never considered by the majority of people. A sizeable portion of them are not even capable of doing so.
• ahmadmijot 4y ago
  Second order is good but I think if there's too much n-th thinking level it will become overthinking lol
• kqr 4y ago
  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 software product $LEGACY, I will save money. I will however also have to prioritise which bugs I fix. This will lead to some bugs that would be fixed today not getting fixed. That might mean that some users of $LEGACY move to a competitor. In turn, it costs more to acquire new customers than to retain old ones, so just maintaining the same customer count while dissatisfying customers until they quit will cost more money than by trying to make existing customers happy. "Quitting $LEGACY customers will however lead to fewer bugs being discovered in $LEGACY, meaning the reduced maintenance budget might be sufficient again. However, quitting customers doesn't only force me to spend more to re-acquire similar number of customers – it might also be negative for marketing, so it becomes harder to acquire new customers, thus having a non-linear effect on the customer replacement costs. "Decreased maintenance of $LEGACY might make some developers happier, but signal to others that we are not serious about the lifecycle of our product. This might result in them not putting in as much effort to make maintenance easier in future products, which will increase the maintenance demand in future products. Thus, insufficient maintenance efforts on $LEGACY may lead to increasing maintenance demand, which leads to insufficient maintenance efforts, which leads to increasing maintenance demand, and so on." As the last parts of that hint at, what's really important is not all the neighbouring causal links, but those that lead to nonlinearities and feedback cycles. By mucking about with things in a stable system, in particular when there are nonlinearities and feedback cycles involved, you can accidentally create an unstable system that wants to drive itself into the ground.
  • NalNezumi 4y ago
    I think people just interpret "future" very differently. For some "future" does include your second and third paragraph, since it is also a potential causality down the line. For others, it's only first paragraph example. Future for some is a branching tree, for others just a linked list.
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• stephc_int13 4y ago
  Predicting the future is notoriously hard and most of the time impossible. Merely thinking about second or third order consequences is not sufficient if the predictions can't be reality checked. The mental models we use are rarely good enough for that, unless you're playing a complete information game like Chess. This is why "gradient descent" is so powerful and widely used intuitively.
• zerop 4y ago
  IMO the problem is the perception that fast thinkers or fast decision makers are smart folks. I know a lots of people who would not give instant answers to problems, they will be always "I will come back to this, let me think through". They give much better solve, but take time. But we are surrounded by people who want fast solutions.
  • matwood 4y ago
    You have to define 'better'. If an entity can process their OODA loop faster than competing entities, they will have an advantage. I agree with you that people who are quick to talk in meetings can sometimes incorrectly come across as smarter, but I caution you to completely discount speed.
    • zerop 4y ago
      Yes, no Bias is good either.
    • barking_biscuit 4y ago
      As an aside, the entity that understands the original formulation of the OODA loop (not the ridiculous circle shaped one) and can find ways to trigger the positive feedback loop (contained within the original diagram) in the mind of their adversary can gain an advantage as they both saturate the opponent's bandwidth and simultaneously take them away from their goals. My understanding behind the original intent of the OODA was to be able to strategically exploit that weakness.
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• O__________O 4y ago
  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 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Einstein–Szilard_letter [2] https://youtube.com/watch?v=Va5T2KcYiOw https://youtube.com/watch?v=Va5T2KcYiOw [3] https://youtu.be/XRr1kaXKBsU?t=49 https://youtu.be/XRr1kaXKBsU?t=49
• chiefalchemist 4y ago
  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.
• xchip 4y ago
  And yet another article explaining us how to be smarter
• paradite 4y ago
  Is this the same as high discount factor gamma in reinforcement learning?
• m0llusk 4y ago
  Part of thinking ahead or to second or third order is being realistic about the range of outcomes. This article characterizes outcomes as "good" or "bad", but realistically almost any scenario is going to generate results in a broad grey area of trade offs including what might be good or bad depending on framing and points of view.
• lupire 4y ago
  What makes Farnam Street especially disappointing is that every time I see "fs.blog" I expect it to be about Free Software, not GOOP for Rationalistics.
• wikitopian 4y ago
  I dislike this framing because it frames thinking and planning ahead as next-level intelligence when it's patience and wisdom masquerading as smartness. A better spin would be, "Stupid? Use this one weird trick (thinking, planning, and acting long-term) to outperform smart people every time!"
• inopinatus 4y ago
  I too believe in the fundamental interconnectedness of all things and am currently searching for a missing cat
• RandomLensman 4y ago
  Misses that people might not be incentivized to do any higher order thinking. It isn't always in someone's interest to consider higher order and more complex outcomes. "Simple" often tends to be quite popular.
• tayistay 4y ago
  That was quite possibly the most shallow article I’ve ever read about thinking deeply.
• thenerdhead 4y ago
  Can we just call it systems thinking and not make up a new word for it? Seems like a very strange fs.blog to begin with that is a very loose definition with little substance. The book Thinking in Systems: A Primer by Donella H. Meadows is an excellent guide to help you with “long term thinking”.
• DubiousPusher 4y ago
  > For example, consider a country that, wanting to inspire regime change in another country, I would propose a different observation regarding international affairs which is that it is simply a problem space above human capacity to solve. I say this because I believe this author is incorrect that the people making foreign policy decisions are not thinking "smart enough". I believe they spend a good deal of their time "gaming out" their decisions, building computer models which justify their decisions and contemplating exactly the kind of second and third order consequences they're talking about. Rather the problem is precisely their logification of the problem. They are too smart and get caught up in their own labyrinth of logic. A lot of the bad choices countries have made over the years could be stopped by some very basic first order thinking. Things like, 99% of the time contributing to violence in a country is bad and leaves the people there more extreme and more violent. (Yes I grant you fighting Hitler was good.) The Rand Corporation's failure over the years to provide good outcomes is almost a perfect example of how an attempt to build a better diplomat has utterly failed. In my opinion there are just classes of problems which in practical terms are unsolvable and it is wise therein to take direct action on the few things you can be certain of and scrupulous about the rest.
  • mistermann 4y ago
    Errors being highly profitable for certain people probably doesn't help matters either.
• ilaksh 4y ago
  Everyone does strategic planning multiple steps down the road to some degree, whether they have a high IQ or not. For some gifted people it is easier. But not something anyone can avoid in daily life. So the article is silly as far as that goes. I think that making a habit of consciously reviewing your assumed consequences _is_ a bit of wisdom. But the article is conflating IQ and that habit. Also, I think the biggest difference maker in strategic planning is usually in the amount of relevant experience in a domain.
• ilaksh 4y ago
  Flagged for pretentious banality.
• MengerSponge 4y ago
  Zeynep's Law: "Until there is substantial and repeated evidence otherwise, assume counterintuitive findings to be false, and second-order effects to be dwarfed by first-order ones in magnitude." https://twitter.com/zeynep/status/1478766408691556353?s=20&t=WRAyzOC3hPpiRH9J1C_5FA https://twitter.com/zeynep/status/1478766408691556353?s=20&t...
  • analyst74 4y ago
    Isn't second order effects quite common and observable in software systems, in history, in economics and everything?
    • marcosdumay 4y ago
      Yes, but those are still the exception. The rule is that higher order consequences are small or nonexistent. The problem is that, there are so many of them that for any decision you will get many of those exceptions worth looking at.
    • MengerSponge 4y ago
      Yes. Zeynep isn't saying "second order effects don't exist". She's saying "don't overthink it". Consider the public health nightmare we've been stuck in for the last three+ years. Instead of giving direct and useful guidance, people worry about how people will react to guidance and make second order arguments against the basic guidance that would actually help.
• deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
• Silverback_VII 4y ago
  To me it is seems as the author is using new term for already known stuff not unlike the famous replacement of conscientiousness whit grit by Angela Duckworth. I would say first-oder thinking replaces reactive thinking and second-oder replaces proactive or anticipatory thinking.
• deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
• jackmott42 4y ago
  Like the 2nd order effect of a modal popup while I'm reading?
• 8jef 4y ago
  Thinking can be sterile, unless it leads to making real life choices. Then, when choosing, so-called second-order thinking can only be fruitful if all ramifications are explored, level by level, which is almost impossible, as other forces opposing your own are simultaneously at play. In that context, self actualization will drain one's forces and lead to defeat, not counting all other people's life that may be crushed in the process. A better way may be to always make the best, highest choice possible. Always aiming for the grandest, most elevated and most valuable choice possible, considering all variables, thoroughly solving every problem as they come. That comes with a cost, but the benefits are infinite.
• kasperset 4y ago
  Very similar to the core concept of this book: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thinking,_Fast_and_Slow https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thinking,_Fast_and_Slow
• sinuhe69 4y ago
  A fancy name for an age-old (and still ways better) concept: system thinking
• photochemsyn 4y ago
  Suggested model: Feynman diagrams. Many people have seen these squiggly little diagrams of subatomic physical processes, such as for example x-ray radiation scattering off of an electron. Each individual diagram has an order, related to the number of nodes in the diagram. In one domain of physics, quantum electrodynamics, each higher order contributes a smaller incremental amount of accuracy to the calculation. Roughly, one might imagine first order gives 90% accuracy, second order gives 99% accuracy, third order givers 99.9% accuracy, etc. In this world, you don't expect the second-order processes to blow up in your face. (technically, this is due to small coupling constants) However, in other domains (quantum chromodynamics, which describes processes inside the proton, neutron, quarks and gluons etc.), the second-order processes can be just as, if not more, influential than first-order processes. Now you have a problem if you ignore second-order processes, as the first order calculation might only give you 10% accuracy, the second gives 20% accuracy and so on. When second (or third) order processes are not insignificant, that's where they can return to bite you in the seat if you ignore them, aka 'blowback'. The difficulty then lies in determining whether or not such second order processes have this potential effect in the system of question.
• legohead 4y ago
  This seems kind of...silly. Something that is taught to us all through our lives, since we were toddlers. Are there any studies for this conjecture?
• swader999 4y ago
  The other part of this second order thinking is to make sure to ask WHY. And keep asking it.
• jonnycomputer 4y ago
  Important, but our knowledge of higher order consequences will usually be more uncertain and plagued by ambiguity, where we don't even know the probabilities involved. My guess is that this can be a recipe for indecision and paralysis, i.e. you need to apply n-order thinking to the decision process itself, with humility about what you know, what you can know, and your own biases, which likely will have a bigger effect the more uncertain situation you are in.
  • the_cat_kittles 4y ago
    what are you talking about? the waterfall method is the only way to go
• ivanjermakov 4y ago
  I found "odds of success" chart hilarious.
• andsoitis 4y ago
  A great book, if you're interested in complex systems and feedback loops is Thinking in Systems by Donella Meadows. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3828902-thinking-in-systems https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3828902-thinking-in-syst...
  • brad0 4y ago
    I just commented with the exact same book suggestion! Do you have any other suggestions on the same area?
    • barking_biscuit 4y ago
      See my reply to the parent for suggestions that compliment and build on that knowledge in a practical way
  • barking_biscuit 4y ago
    If you like that and it really resonated with you, you might also find a lot of value in Drift Into Failure and Resilience Engineering: Concepts and Precepts I've found the more I go down the rabbit hole on these particular topics, the faster I'm able to spot problems at a system wide scale in realtime and (try) course correct.
• brad0 4y ago
  A book I just finished that explains this quite well is Thinking in Systems: A Primer. It touches on systems, modeling, nonlinearilites, etc. I saw someone suggest another book on economics. Are there any other books people recommend for systems and multi-order thinking?
• testing654321 4y ago
  insightful!
• dqpb 4y ago
  Next up, Modeling: What Engineers Use to Outperform
• nevinera 4y ago
  I usually just call this "bothering to think". The initial gut-level 'thinking' is really just pattern-matching.
• the_cat_kittles 4y ago
  this is a type of article and thinking that is appealing to people because its very easy to understand, and appears useful. theres no barrier to entry here because theres no corpus of knowledge required or demonstration of skill. just say something that sounds kind of coherent and simple, that probably reinforces what people already believe. it might seem overly negative to care about this. maybe it is. but this website describes itself as "Brain Food. A weekly newsletter packed with timeless insights and actionable ideas from a wide range of disciplines." its selling the idea that you can gain something from reading 45 second articles that say hardly anything. this kind of stuff is for people who are too lazy or dont have enough time to learn something for real, and i think its worse than useless
  • decebalus1 4y ago
    I think you'd be interested in this https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32335165 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32335165
  • mmmmpancakes 4y ago
    Conversely, there is a type of person who thinks everything worth knowing must require investment on behalf of the learner. It's not surprising this type of person is very common among the highly educated: school indoctrinates us with this belief. For these people everything is a struggle. They may even miss opportunities to easily pick up simple but useful ideas or skills because they have a closed mindset.
    • svnt 4y ago
      These are two perspectives from two people, one of whom had perhaps heard of this approach before, and one who perhaps had not. The key distinguishing factor here in continuing education is not what you describe, though. As you become more educated, you realize there are more approaches to anything than you can functionally know at any one time, much less use. This article essentially suggests you simply consider more consequences. Both useful in concept (if you’ve never thought of it), and totally useless in advanced practice due to the complexity of the system and your inability to predict the future accurately due to the nature of complexity. The thing that is really under-appreciated by the less educated is the incredible amounts of information available in the written word that can be had with additional critical reading comprehension training and experience. It was obvious before we got to the totally made-up success vs second-order thinking chart that this article was low effort and no substance. Quoting Ray Dalio was an early red flag. After the chart it was just sort of funny.
• imwillofficial 4y ago
  For want of a nail the shoe was lost. For want of a shoe the horse was lost. For want of a horse the rider was lost. For want of a rider the message was lost. For want of a message the battle was lost. For want of a battle the kingdom was lost. And all for the want of a horseshoe nail.
• more_corn 4y ago
  If I do x, y and z may happen. Isn’t this thinking we learn in fifth grade?
• tunnuz 4y ago
  Are these great mental models book worth the time?
• bendbro 4y ago
  Not sure why this article needs to reinforce antiquated social constructs like "sm*rt people" to get its point across. "Sm*rt People" are like 10x programmers- a fantasy formed to justify inequities derived from the hegemony we are are complicit in perpetuating. Nobody is sm*rt intrinsically, they simply have unfair access to experiences, resources, culture, education, and genetics that give them a temporally maximal average problem/solution response aptitude. You are not a sm*rt person or a d**b person, we are all just people, with completely equal capacity to do great or bad things. We must take great care to tolerate others and be sure to excise this cancer of bigoted, Black/white, exclusionary, non-nuanced, traditional thinking from our society. Bigots watch out, you are on the wrong side of history!
• speleding 4y ago
  This is not a new idea, there was a management fad in the nineties around understanding higher order effects and how they applied to businesses. The book everyone manager had to read back then was "The Fifth discipline" by an MIT professor. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fifth_Discipline https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fifth_Discipline (It's actually a pretty interesting read, as far as management books go)
• ineedasername 4y ago
  Something to keep in mind, something often forgotten by those folks in meetings that are always “no, no, nope” to just about everything. Different personalities do it for different reasons, sometimes just to show how smart they are for seeing a negative second order consequence. Regardless if why such a person does it though the thing to remember is that a negative second order impact is not at all a show stopper that prevents the initial action. The key to overcoming “no” people is precisely why you want to be a second/third order thinker: understand the negative n-order impacts and have a mitigation plan for them. Nothing stops the “no” person faster than if you can preempt them completely or respond to their objections with “Sure Bob, you make a fantastic point. I’m glad you mentioned that because it allows us to cover a solution I have planned that we can review right now without having to take things offline and delay action on this.” I’m sure some HN’ers may abhor the need for that sort of soft politicking and personality management but a diplomatic approach along these lines let’s both you and the “no” person keep face with less risk for confrontational dialogue, especially because Bob can be seen as a useful contributor as well. (And yep, confrontation isn’t inherently a bad thing to be avoided at all costs, but the consequences of it are complicated and not always predictable. If Bob objects further without good cause, sure, roll out the pointed questions and firm requests for concrete reasoning.)
• cvccvroomvroom 4y ago
  Is this problem worth solving? What can I do to create the most impact?
• phforms 4y ago
  Thinking in systems, their interactions, feedback-cycles and causal dependencies is a very important and underdeveloped skill for any person, regardless of profession, since we all live and have to make decisions in an increasingly messy/complex/interactive environment. I believe second/nth-order thinking can help with that. From my personal experience I can recommend the free online course “Introduction to Complexity” since it helped me develop a better understanding and intuition about these things: https://www.complexityexplorer.org/courses/144-introduction-to-complexity https://www.complexityexplorer.org/courses/144-introduction-... and also the book “The Art of interconnected thinking” from Frederic Vester (I am not sure if this is the correct translation, the German title is: “Die Kunst vernetzt zu denken”). But there are of course many other great resources to learn about complexity and systems thinking. It is also increasingly important to think beyond our own (ideological, disciplinary, conditioned, etc.) “tunnel”, because many problems in the real world have multiple dimensions to them, just like there is not only black and white, not only grayscale, but all the colours of the rainbow. It is convenient to stay in one dimension (e.g. our own profession, a paradigm/worldview, a conceptual framework) because it makes us feel confident and secure. Often we can afford to do so if the implications of our decisions stay within the boundaries of our “tunnel”. But this is most often not the case in complex environments and being ignorant about those other dimensions can lead to miscommunication and failure to address the concerns of our clients, relationships, etc. So I would recommend not only nth-order thinking, but also multi-dimensional thinking (which may be included in the former, but should be emphasized more strongly I believe).
  • ephbit 4y ago
    > ... we all live and have to make decisions in an increasingly messy/complex/interactive environment. Sorry for isolating this one aspect from the rest of your post. But this is IMO a very important yet too seldom discussed aspect of our modern societies. What's the outcome of fixed (more or less) cognitive capacity brains being confronted with ever increasing complexity of society? Can it be a favourable outcome?
• dcanelhas 4y ago
  I think this sounds like using a Markov process to model a current state and reachable states, at two steps away, and tryimg to assign transition probabilities between them. The flaw I see in this approach is that one has limited sensing (don't really know the true state of things) and likely a large number of possible transitions to other states that are outside of one's influence or ability to predict. But I guess it may work well in limited domains, with few variables/agents and it's probably better to give it some thought rather than ignoring it completely.