7 ms·
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 fut
by 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 agoI 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.
- Ensorceled 4y agoThis is a good analogy .. many of the comments in this thread that are confusing 2nd order thinking with long term thinking are clearly just thinking of iterating 1st order thinking along the time line.
- CrumpetDiagonal 4y agoI popped in to say much same. But the statistician in me thinks about it such that 2nd order thinking and longer term impacts often coincide due to the time it may take 2nd order impacts to play out. But in some systems, 2nd order impacts happen on short timeframes. So I’d describe it as a correlation between 2nd order and long term thinking.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- atoav 4y agoI 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.
- omginternets 4y agoI think it roughly amounts to “thinking through the implications of the implications”.
- drewcoo 4y agoI think that's 3rd order, actually. Why does this remind me of Abbot and Costello? https://youtu.be/sShMA85pv8M?t=64 https://youtu.be/sShMA85pv8M?t=64
- omginternets 4y ago"If x, then y" is one implication, so that's first-order reasoning. "If y, then z" is second-order reasoning.
- Akronymus 4y agoWouldn't "if x, then y because z" be second order?
- omginternets 4y agoAs I see it, z is a different type than x and y. It’s the causal arrow linking x to y. The existence of a second causal arrow would make it second-order.
- hu3 4y agoThe problem I have with exploring neighbouring causal links is that when overdone it can lead to analysis paralysis. I often get stuck simulating too many different branches in possible futures and casual links to the point of slowing down my present capabilities. My GF calls it overthinking, and not in a good way. Perhaps I just need a bigger brain with more processing power.
- 2-718-281-828 4y agoor the opposite - in ML terms more brain will likely just introduce overfitting - while less brain makes way for some neat generalization that is quick and works just good enough ;)
- gautamdivgi 4y agoYou can use a mind mapping tool and limit your expansion radius. I've had some success with that.
- philosopher1234 4y agoI think it requires balance. Seems to me like the more you can consider the better decision you can reach, but there is a point where thinking more is negative value, and you must decide. “The instant of decision is madness” -Kierkegaard
- NikolaNovak 4y agoThis. I've received consistent feedback (from mentor, from family, etc) to do less second-order analysis. It can be very productive in some specific scenarios, especially when I used to do initial architecture; but these days, it's a complete analysis paralysis. Moving from technological architecture to people leadership / client relationship management, second order thinking brings up so many pros and cons for each action, with insufficient data to weigh the balancing.
- yojo 4y agoI've taken to using a sort of internal version of "disagree and commit" - I have the little mental debate with myself, arrive at an ambiguous juncture, then pick an option (at random if necessary) and go all-in on it. If it turns out I was wrong there's usually still time to course-correct. Delaying or not making a decision is a choice itself, one that is almost always inferior to the options you're stuck between.
- kodah 4y agoIn SRE roles I've been in it's often second-order issues that plague software. In many ways, things boil down to process and what value/principles each process delivers and operates on. Misalignment in that space can be causal to a great number of things. Explaining second-order issues tends to be difficult as well, mainly because due to their nature there's often incomplete data to work with, so solving them is often piece-meal.
- paulpauper 4y agoIt boils down to "actions have consequences," some of which may be unfavorable. And those consequences have other possible consequences. It grows exponentially. So you need to figure out how to anticipate these consequences.
- paultopia 4y agoI wonder whether this is an example that in part also might cause us to question the utility of second/nth-order thinking? Because the more distant causal links are also estimated with more and more uncertainty (and necessarily so, insofar as uncertainty compounds across causal links), to the point where it becomes hard to weigh highly uncertain distant consequences against relatively certain near consequences?
- slowhand09 4y agoI would expect a Venn diagram of 1st order thinking vs unintended consequences, to have more overlap than a 2nd order thinking vs unintended consequences.