[HN Gopher] Second-Order Thinking
___________________________________________________________________
Second-Order Thinking
Author : irsagent
Score : 417 points
Date : 2022-08-15 07:26 UTC (15 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (fs.blog)
(TXT) w3m dump (fs.blog)
| noduerme wrote:
| 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.
| tomohawk wrote:
| Cynicism is not a substitute for wisdom.
| noduerme wrote:
| mattsahr wrote:
| What? Wisdom is expensive! If you're fresh out of wisdom, or
| just low on cash, you can TOTALLY use cynicism 1:1 in most
| recipes.
| tomohawk wrote:
| How cynical!
| smilespray wrote:
| Or Worcestershire sauce. Everything tastes better with
| Worcestershire sauce.
| gnfargbl wrote:
| A healthy _skepticism_ can be a useful way to avoid vacuous
| thinking.
| TremendousJudge wrote:
| Yes, I completely agree. The author should have applied it
| to his "odds of success vs extent to which you consider
| second order and subsequent consecuences" graph and saved
| everybody the time.
| krapp wrote:
| Skepticism requires critical thinking and engagement. You
| can't be a proper skeptic about something without taking
| the time to understand the domain you're being skeptical
| of, approach it in good faith from first principles as much
| as possible, and accept criticism in kind.
|
| Most people just won't bother, because cynicism and snark
| provide a better endorphin hit, and the internet has
| trained people to associate that feeling with likelihood of
| correctness (what Stephen Colbert called "truthiness" back
| in the day.)
| [deleted]
| wawjgreen wrote:
| the first things skeptics should be skeptical about is
| skepticism itself: are they right in being skeptical
| about what they are skeptical about?
| ehnto wrote:
| If in their analysis, they come to the conclusion that
| they shouldn't be skeptical, does that make them the best
| skeptic or the worst?
| noduerme wrote:
| The first thing skeptics question are sentences which
| begin with
|
| >> the first things skeptics should be skeptical about
|
| from there I guess we just migrate up to talking shit
| about bloated blog posts where one dude mumbles his
| observations about deep thoughts.
| gexla wrote:
| I generally skip articles from Farnam Street. Once I saw the
| source, I already knew what the comments would be. ;)
| ramblerman wrote:
| Yeah I like Shane, but FS seems it has too narrow a focus and
| he has tried really hard to squeeze every last drop out of
| these mental models.
| wawjgreen wrote:
| FS articles are deep in a shallow way, kinda like if
| Aristotle directed the "Avengers" (movie)... hehehe.
| vocram wrote:
| What's the problem with FS?
| honkler wrote:
| noduerme wrote:
| y'know goddammit that's it. I'm gonna start a blog and
| cross post every day to HN and tell you all lots of really
| amazing observations about life you never even thought of
| before.
|
| Just kidding hahshahah I'd never do that
|
| edit but only because I'm lazy
| wnolens wrote:
| It's like Tim Ferris, filtered for the "intellectual"
| topics. Yawn
| mynameisash wrote:
| Yeah, I think that about sums it up. I started listening
| to Tim Ferris years ago because there were a few decent
| episodes, but I hit a breaking point after one-too-many
| horrendous episodes.
|
| I discovered FS a couple years ago and have enjoyed
| _some_ of them, but I 'm very close to unsubscribing from
| this one. There have been a lot of low quality episodes
| as well as some negative quality: goofy web3
| technobabble.
| Ecstatify wrote:
| Their podcast 'The Knowledge Project' is essentially a book
| tour for authors flogging their new book 'Framework/Mental
| Models to achieve X'.
|
| Modern day magic beans to make you smarter.
| jrh206 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| especially when the graph has a slope so you can calculate
| the derivative as an example of 2nd order thinking.
| jrh206 wrote:
| Which, by the way, seems to be heading towards infinity,
| which isn't right at all.
| csours wrote:
| Hah, jokes on you! Second-Order thinking is what I use to torture
| my own brain and underperform.
| csours wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| hkon wrote:
| Thinking n moves ahead as its usually called
| phtrivier wrote:
| My problem with n-order thinking are in-grained pessimism, and
| lots of imagination.
|
| Perfect recipe for never doing anything.
| acka wrote:
| 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?
| tayistay wrote:
| That was quite possibly the most shallow article I've ever read
| about thinking deeply.
| stephc_int13 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| Yes, no Bias is good either.
| brad0 wrote:
| 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?
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| The word here is: Strategy
| [deleted]
| imwillofficial wrote:
| 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.
| lupire wrote:
| ekianjo wrote:
| Is this supposed to be deep or something? That seems on the
| contrary extremely shallow and devoid of any insight.
| noncoml wrote:
| Totally r/iamverysmart vibes
| iamacyborg wrote:
| Well, it is Farnam Street...
| andsoitis wrote:
| 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-syst...
| brad0 wrote:
| I just commented with the exact same book suggestion! Do you
| have any other suggestions on the same area?
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| 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.
| evv555 wrote:
| >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.
| noduerme wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| "Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived
| forwards." - Soren Kierkegaard
| gostsamo wrote:
| I call it the _minority report problem_.
| Shugarl wrote:
| Is it me, or does everyone here have a different definition of
| what n-th order thinking means ?
| abdulhaq wrote:
| 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
| tunnuz wrote:
| Are these great mental models book worth the time?
| iopq wrote:
| This is a first-order article on second-order thinking
| [deleted]
| jackmott42 wrote:
| Like the 2nd order effect of a modal popup while I'm reading?
| verisimi wrote:
| 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.
| [deleted]
| thenerdhead wrote:
| 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".
| ineedasername wrote:
| 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.)
| sinuhe69 wrote:
| A fancy name for an age-old (and still ways better) concept:
| system thinking
| 12ian34 wrote:
| 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.
| natmaka wrote:
| Indeed, and in many ways it leads to holism.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holism
| Ensorceled wrote:
| In my day job, I encounter a lot of suggested solutions from my
| team and colleagues that will not succeed for various reasons.
|
| Just because we will not discover those failures until after
| the implementation in a couple of weeks does not make my better
| solutions "long term thinking".
|
| Long term thinking is "will this solution that will work
| perfectly fine right now, still be the right solution in 2023"
| 12ian34 wrote:
| Whether or not "long term thinking" is what you say it is, I
| don't think the article does a good job of providing any real
| value. The author is getting confused between "long term" and
| "second order" thinking. The concept of "second order
| thinking" seems to just mean "thinking about the indirect
| impact of one's actions" which seems hardly book-worthy to
| me.
| forgotusername6 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| how is that not long term thinking?
| snapcaster wrote:
| Some second order thinking might involve long term thinking
| but my understanding of what is commonly meant is:
|
| Long term thinking is termporally based, what will X look
| like in Y amounts of time
|
| Second (or third) order thinking, is based on response to
| consequences or changes. Could be over a long term, or over
| a short term.
|
| This seems pretty straightforward but you seem to take
| issue with it. I'm curious what you think is being messed
| up by people using these definitions?
| matwood wrote:
| Because second order can also be immediate, it just may not
| be a direct intention of the action.
| rob_c wrote:
| I... If we're going to argue the temporal component of
| planning you better not look back over the last 3
| years...
| Ensorceled wrote:
| > > 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 wrote:
| 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?
| thfuran wrote:
| No, time has nothing to do with it, only the length of
| the causal chain. That's why it's not really "long term"
| thinking even if higher order effects might sometimes not
| be felt immediately.
| tinco wrote:
| It is long term thinking. But long term thinking is not
| necessarily 2nd order thinking. It's basically good long
| term thinking, where you don't just come up with a plan
| that addresses a problem, but you also enumerate all the
| secondary effects, and the effects of those effects, etc.
| Any good long term thinking would do that, but it's not
| always clear if people really have thought it through.
|
| If someone says ban ICE vehicles so that we might have
| better air quality and reduced rate of climate change, have
| they taken into account what the economic, cultural and
| political ramifications of such legislation would be? They
| might have, someone might have, but definitely not everyone
| has. Who had "Texas secedes from the USA" on their list of
| possible outcomes of their long term plan for addressing
| climate change?
| rob_c wrote:
| It is but it isn't? Followed by some banter about
| illegals.
|
| This comment in it's blind ignorance is a godsent gift to
| people of a leftwing political bias...
| tinco wrote:
| I don't follow, what do you mean? Is there blind
| ignorance in my comment?
|
| edit: oh you mean you don't understand how something can
| be a superset of something else without being the same
| set. So I'm saying there's long term thinking _with_ 2nd
| order thinking, and there 's long term thinking without
| 2nd order thinking.
| anoplus wrote:
| Thanks for the TL/DR
| [deleted]
| noduerme wrote:
| brightball wrote:
| 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-t...
| noduerme wrote:
| pjmorris wrote:
| I read the New Testament 2-4 times per year (and the Old
| Testament every year or so) and I'm convinced I don't
| understand him. But I'm trying.
| brightball wrote:
| That's healthy. We can't ever completely understand, but
| we can certainly improve with time and study.
|
| I found that study groups at church were the most
| beneficial for me because I hear a lot of perspectives
| that never crossed my mind.
|
| There's also a great book call The Bible from 30,000 Feet
| that gives great commentary on each book.
| noduerme wrote:
| I don't understand him and he's one of the most
| interesting figures of all time... and I say that without
| believing in his divinity. But I think the direct words
| are the truest part. If you can ever get your hands on
| the book "Jesus" by Henri Barbusse .. it is a humbling
| version of the book told through his own words. Barbusse
| was a Christian socialist who thought Jesus was basically
| a communist... but if you look at a lot of what Jesus
| said, he was mostly a communist (at least compared to the
| Jews at the time who wanted to suppress his ideas). of
| course the Jews always have to be the bad guys in this
| story, even though our only sin was saying this guy
| wasn't the messiah. But I do personally think that a lot
| of what he had to say was good and necessary. It was just
| widely misunderstood which led to thousands of years of
| my people being slaughtered... but he did make good
| points about humans, forgiveness, charity and work.
| brightball wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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
| mbg721 wrote:
| Everybody and their second cousin have been trying to
| call themselves the successors of the Romans, from the
| Byzantines to the Franks to the Ottomans to the Russians
| to Mussolini. (Edit: and, of course, the Pope) But I
| think this is the first time I've heard it as a
| pejorative.
| nbzso wrote:
| You are wrong, about me. My higher education is
| theological. I have read some old books. I have a lot of
| Jewish friends, which have the ability to avoid
| "antisemitic" label when faced with a constructive
| question. I put ethical principles above any form of
| religion. And with the time, my view on religions is
| growing more negative than positive. Humans essentially
| are all the same. We have similar needs and dreams, to
| live decently and enjoy friendship, love and harmony.
|
| /// Goy can be used in a derogatory manner. The Yiddish
| lexicographer Leo Rosten in The New Joys of Yiddish
| defines goy as someone who is non-Jewish or someone who
| is dull, insensitive, or heartless.[22] Goy also occurs
| in many pejorative Yiddish expressions:
|
| Dos ken nor a goy - Something only a goy would do or is
| capable of doing.[22] A goy blabt a goy - "A goy stays a
| goy," or, less literally, according to Rosten, "What did
| you expect? Once an anti-Semite always an anti-
| Semite."[22] Goyisher kopf - "Gentile head," someone who
| doesn't think ahead, an idiot.[22][23] Goyishe naches -
| Pleasures or pursuits only a gentile would enjoy.[24] A
| goy! - Exclamation of exasperation used "when endurance
| is exhausted, kindliness depleted, the effort to
| understand useless".[25]
| noduerme wrote:
| It's essentially the same word as "Farang" in Thai, just
| means anyone foreign or outside the ethnicity. The same
| thing in Chinese translates to "barbarian". I believe
| Christians have words like "heathen" and "infidel" and
| "witch" but most of those carry much more viciousness
| than "goy". Goyim are nonjews. What people do with that
| or say about them is on them. To be clear, the
| antisemitic patt of your post was the inference that we
| all have some opinions about non-Jews, and that calling
| them goyim was somehow an inside joke. It is literally
| just a word for anyone not Jewish. You amplified your
| suspicion of it with your references here but... It means
| nothing more. Do some white people call black people N**
| ? Do some white people sit around a bar talking about
| Kikes? (they do - and I look and act country enough to
| have heard it a hundred times). Oh yeah and those kikes
| call us goys... heh. I swear, I've never seen white pride
| so fearful as when they start ruminating on that little
| word. But I promise it's mostly just a phrase meaning not
| one of us. The barbarian overtones are put on by people
| who don't understand... in order to say "look! they're
| talking shit about all of us in their funny Yiddish
| language!" We're not. But thinking we are is basically a
| conspiracy theory, and that's what makes it antisemitic.
| Does that make sense?
| bloomingeek wrote:
| <I've read the New Testament and I think actually it's the
| modern Christians who don't understand him.>
|
| Exactly! I'm a former evangelical who could no longer
| stomach the way they have changed the interpretation of the
| New Testament to achieve their own means. I'm still a
| believer and consider ethics as the most important thing
| any human can achieve. When ethics and the rule of law go
| out the window humans always turn on each other.
| josephg wrote:
| > If you dig deep, you'll find that pride is the root of
| virtually every evil.
|
| I think we live in the tension between being big and being
| small in the world. If you're big and you have bad judgement,
| you'll cause more harm than if you're small and have bad
| judgement. But being small is also an act of self
| abandonment. At its extreme, its no life at all.
|
| Far too many people I know have no idea how to take up space
| with the confidence that they have something valuable to add
| to the world. They have important ideas - but don't back
| themselves and don't pursue them. We're all worse off when
| that happens.
|
| Whats the point in learning ethics if you keep yourself
| powerless anyway?
|
| I think cowardice and timidity are much bigger problems in
| modern society than pride.
| noduerme wrote:
| dang wrote:
| It's wonderful that you had (or have!) a close relationship
| with your grandfather, but please don't post religious slurs to
| HN. It leads to religious flamewar, which is the last thing we
| need here.
|
| We detached this subthread from
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32467495.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| k0k0r0 wrote:
| A related thing that seems unthinkable for many people now is
| how dynamic opinions are. Like, not intelectually, but from
| experience understanding that my world view currently firmly
| stands on a foundation that might very well fall apart some
| day... I feel that experience deeply shaped my character.
| Funnily, I think my opinions are now standing on even firmer
| grounds since I stopped expecting them to hold forever.
|
| People talk about their opinion as if it was some static thing
| that was always like this and will always be. Completely
| unaware how their own opinion evolved throughout their life and
| might evolve if they allow too. Also completely unaware of how
| irrelevant their opinion is, except for the consequences that
| follow from acting according to it.
|
| "[...] But that's just my opinion. [...]", as if anybody should
| care. And, as if protecting their world view from the debate
| that might rip it apart. As if that'd be a painful and scary
| experience. (No even talking about how people use that sentence
| in order to spread fear, anger or hatred.) As if they'd need to
| put their whole life into question if they'd changed some if
| their opinions.
|
| Often I think in the past there were people that lived
| according to this wisdom. I am not sure to what extend that's
| true, but I do not often meet such people now. Even in
| intelectual spheres, where some people even might talk about
| wisdom like this it often feels hollow to me if they do.
| noduerme wrote:
| One thing I find exceptional about your statement and also
| about a number of similar treatises of recent years is the
| seeming hopelessness of finding your own self clear of the
| endless subjectivity of others' conflicting opinions.
|
| You may find it terrible, but I actually believe in objective
| reality. I believe I know good and evil when I see them...
| and I can do this without access to the supernatural or
| recourse to religion. I believe in better and worse outcomes
| for individuals and for societies. I believe some societies
| are better than others, because I've lived in 34 countries
| over 20 years and I can make honest comparisons about the
| pros and cons of each. Nowhere is perfect, but some actually
| are better -- objectively, if you believe that being
| expressive and embracing diversity and freedom of thought is
| a good thing. Personally I think good==complexity and
| evil==destruction, and so anything that kills life is
| destroying complexity that the universe demands, so is
| necessarily a kind of evil.
|
| The Achilles heel of people younger than me is that they
| think opinions on the internet actually mean something... and
| the younger they are the less they seem to believe in the
| objective truth of the world. Call it the corrupting
| influence of Instagram, I guess. But I think it's due for a
| major backlash, because no one wants to have their morals
| dictated to them that way... and the objective world remains.
| It always remains. True things are true, false are false;
| evil is hypocrisy, and it's rampant. It is not a subjective,
| religious pronouncement.. it's a thing that is fucking right
| there.
|
| 2+2=4
| l33t2328 wrote:
| These comments are all over the place. I can't identify a
| coherent point.
| the_only_law wrote:
| Sounds like some weird form of Dualism for HN nerds.
| Either that or a convenient way to label people who's
| values differ from your own as evil.
| aaronblohowiak wrote:
| +100. Relativism is liberalism for intellectually
| malnourished
| noduerme wrote:
| Also your opinion strikes me as very Japanese... and to argue
| why individual rights are important or why you should develop
| strong, objective, even antisocial anti-government personal
| opinions is, on a Japanese level, an entirely different
| conversation from me trying to convince a westerner that
| objective reality exists and has ethics whether we want it to
| or not.
| frodetb wrote:
| 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.
| wikitopian wrote:
| 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!"
| O__________O wrote:
| 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
|
| [2] https://youtube.com/watch?v=Va5T2KcYiOw
|
| [3] https://youtu.be/XRr1kaXKBsU?t=49
| DubiousPusher wrote:
| > 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 wrote:
| Errors being highly profitable for certain people probably
| doesn't help matters either.
| swader999 wrote:
| The other part of this second order thinking is to make sure to
| ask WHY. And keep asking it.
| dqpb wrote:
| Next up,
|
| Modeling: What Engineers Use to Outperform
| ilaksh wrote:
| 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.
| jo_beef wrote:
| The whole article can be summed up to :
|
| 1. Think of something 2. Return to that thought from time to time
| 3. Repeat
| the_cat_kittles wrote:
| 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
| mmmmpancakes wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| decebalus1 wrote:
| I think you'd be interested in this
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32335165
| testing654321 wrote:
| insightful!
| 8jef wrote:
| 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.
| jll29 wrote:
| 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 - free video).
| inopinatus wrote:
| I too believe in the fundamental interconnectedness of all things
| and am currently searching for a missing cat
| [deleted]
| nevinera wrote:
| I usually just call this "bothering to think". The initial gut-
| level 'thinking' is really just pattern-matching.
| jacknews wrote:
| 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.
| [deleted]
| iopq wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| For me, building a machine is identical to writing code.
|
| I can't really see a difference.
| seanhunter wrote:
| 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.
| hef19898 wrote:
| >> 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.
| Aeolun wrote:
| 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.
| another-dave wrote:
| > 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 wrote:
| Agree, it's usually thinking about the consequences, things
| that don't seem clear directly that makes second order
| thinking hard.
| rowanG077 wrote:
| > 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.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| de6u99er wrote:
| 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.
| jlajna wrote:
| This is just an advert for some guy's book, isn't it?
| jmeister wrote:
| It's not actually. What is the point of this comment?
| thrown_22 wrote:
| At first order it isn't, but at second order it is.
| eska wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| Second order ad. :)
| jll29 wrote:
| I'm curious how they wrote 3 volumes about that - has anyone
| read it?
| rob_c wrote:
| the result of the 1st book is you need to read the second
| dna_polymerase wrote:
| 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.
| ISL wrote:
| The Most Important Thing is a great book. I prefer the non-
| annotated version.
|
| If you're a value investor and haven't yet encountered it, it
| is a great and accessible read. I've given a number of copies
| to friends.
| jonnycomputer wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| what are you talking about? the waterfall method is the only
| way to go
| chiefalchemist wrote:
| 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.
| more_corn wrote:
| If I do x, y and z may happen. Isn't this thinking we learn in
| fifth grade?
| ilaksh wrote:
| Flagged for pretentious banality.
| xchip wrote:
| And yet another article explaining us how to be smarter
| Silverback_VII wrote:
| 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.
| kasperset wrote:
| Very similar to the core concept of this book:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thinking,_Fast_and_Slow
| photochemsyn wrote:
| 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.
| pella wrote:
| My favorite example: The cobra effect
| 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"_
| danw1979 wrote:
| 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.
| noduerme wrote:
| what's the difference between domain experience and iterating
| over cause and effect?
| dkarl wrote:
| > 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.
|
| Don't forget the ability to snag readers by attributing their
| success to a simple rule that anybody can absorb in two
| minutes.
| jdmoreira wrote:
| > 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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
| noduerme wrote:
| 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.
| koonsolo wrote:
| > I tried explaining the Coastline Paradox[0] to him but it
| just didn't stick.
|
| Just keep repeating yourself. At one point someone will come
| with this great idea about the coastline paradox, and
| everyone will get it.
|
| Happend to me a few times. Don't know how many times I stole
| someone elses idea like this :D.
| skrebbel wrote:
| I have no idea whether this applies to your manager, but I
| find that a fair bit of seemingly overly simplistic
| management is actually, to use the terms of this topic,
| carefully tuned second-order thinking. It goes like this:
|
| 1. Devs are natural overthinkers, prone to analysis paralysis
| and to feature/quality creep.
|
| 2. If we remove nuance from the conversation about planning,
| this causes frustration with the devs because they're feeling
| unheard (1st order effect, a common complaint on HN)
|
| 3. However, it sets a culture of "just shipping", trying to
| find corners that can be reasonably cut, making sure that
| problems that are hard to explain to the dumb boss aren't
| really simply too small to matter (or too far in the future),
| etc. This increases agility in the longer term and might be
| worth the initial frustration (second order effect).
|
| I'm sure many managers who stop at 2 and don't care about the
| adverse effect. Just ship the features so I get my bonus, you
| nerd. That's bad. But there's just as many who use overly
| simplistic reasoning as a tool to nudge a culture into a
| particular direction, and it's not always easy to tell at the
| beginning which of the two is going on. As a natural
| overthinker, I find this a worthy skill to cultivate and I'm
| impressed with people who can do it well.
| rob_c wrote:
| well I guess that's why he's a manager...
| rob_c wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| bendbro wrote:
| 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!
| ahmadmijot wrote:
| Second order is good but I think if there's too much n-th
| thinking level it will become overthinking lol
| m3kw9 wrote:
| Is this the same as derivative thinking?
| legohead wrote:
| 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?
| paradite wrote:
| Is this the same as high discount factor gamma in reinforcement
| learning?
| speleding wrote:
| 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
|
| (It's actually a pretty interesting read, as far as management
| books go)
| MengerSponge wrote:
| 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...
| analyst74 wrote:
| Isn't second order effects quite common and observable in
| software systems, in history, in economics and everything?
| MengerSponge wrote:
| 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.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| 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.
| kqr wrote:
| 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.
| kodah wrote:
| In 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.
| NalNezumi wrote:
| 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.
| CrumpetDiagonal wrote:
| I 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.
| Ensorceled wrote:
| This 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.
| [deleted]
| paultopia wrote:
| I 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?
| paulpauper wrote:
| It 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.
| hu3 wrote:
| The 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 wrote:
| or 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 wrote:
| You can use a mind mapping tool and limit your expansion
| radius. I've had some success with that.
| philosopher1234 wrote:
| I 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 wrote:
| This. 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.
| Gareth321 wrote:
| I agree. I believe it is not that second-order thinking is
| unhelpful, but rather that it is only useful when applied
| wisely. The challenge is knowing when and how to apply it,
| and of course having the tool kit necessary to do this kind
| of thinking.
| yojo wrote:
| I'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.
| mrkstu wrote:
| Yep, fail fast is often going to have a superior
| resolution time than time spent in deep analysis.
| entropicdrifter wrote:
| Plus you get more experience making decisions, more
| experience making _quick_ decisions, _and_ more problem-
| solving experience that way.
| morley wrote:
| Leveled thinking is common in competitive games, for obvious
| reasons. There's no better illustration of what you're
| talking about than the poison scene in Princess Bride:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rMz7JBRbmNo
|
| The way I've heard most competitive gamers talk about the
| line between leveling and tail-chasing is to play at level 2:
|
| Level 1: The obvious strategy
|
| Level 2: Strategy that beats the obvious strategy <-- Default
| to this level
|
| Level 3: Strategy that beats level 1
|
| The problem is, if you're playing in a competitive
| environment, everyone knows about leveling, so you may
| actually gain more edge by picking a strategy randomly. I've
| heard competitive Magic player Huey Jensen would make random
| plays when he was behind on the chance he could throw his
| opponent off and trap them in leveling second-guessing.
| balderdash wrote:
| I've seen the analysis paralysis happen as well, but I think
| the key is to also assign likelihoods/severities upside
| downside to the analysis, you can usually quickly triage what
| to focus on from there (or as I often find the nice you've
| bounded the range of likely outcomes, pick the one one that
| fits your risk tolerance (e.g. do I take the train for an
| almost guaranteed 3hr trip, or do I try and outsmart the
| traffic and either be right and have a 2hr trip, or be wrong
| and have a 4hr trip)
| atoav wrote:
| I 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.
| Brian_K_White wrote:
| I don't know if this is quite the model the article
| describes, but I say this is at least a similar and equally
| useful model.
| steppi wrote:
| In a way, I think you and your parent are both right. The
| missing link is that the analogy is based on multivariate
| series. First order deals with each variable in isolation.
| X1, X2, X3, . . . Second order contains interaction terms
| like X1 x X2 (The X1^2 can be thought of as a self
| interaction.) Third order would consider interactions between
| three variables and so on.
|
| I'm not sure if this a false etymology, but it's how I've
| always understood the term and I've met others who understand
| it this way as well.
|
| I think the origin may be from linear regression with
| polynomial terms, which is very common in the medical
| sciences and social sciences. Terms like X1 x X2 are called
| interaction terms in that context and coefficients are often
| treated as quantifying the impact of a term on the result.
| Strictly speaking, the analogy would then be with any
| multivariate polynomial approximation, not just Taylor
| series.
| OJFord wrote:
| 'order' has many meanings in mathematics, and I'm not sure of
| the best metaphor that is actually called an order there, but
| when people talk colloquially about 'second order effects'
| etc. IME they mean something like a vertex v2 (doing
| something) in response to a change to v1, where there exists
| a vertex vj and edges (v1, vj) & (vj, v2) - and implicitly no
| edge (v1, v2). Higher 'orders' similarly extending the chain.
|
| Or think chess - 'first order thinking' would make a move
| that merely escapes mate, or puts you in a position where
| another move immediately could be a great one; 'second order
| thinking' considers what the opponent will do from there
| (probably disallow the great move or threaten it back); etc.
| js8 wrote:
| IMHO, the figure of speech "n-th order" generally comes
| from Taylor series approximation, where n-th term is indeed
| expressed using n-th derivative. Also, if the series
| converges, the higher order terms will become smaller, thus
| the practice of approximating the reality up to n-th order
| term.
|
| Also, it's often practical to ignore 2nd order and higher
| terms, because then you have a linear function - something
| really easy to work with. Therefore, "2nd order effects"
| have effectively become synonymous to "non-linear effects".
| cbm-vic-20 wrote:
| E = mc^2 is a notable example.
| thrown_22 wrote:
| Higher order functions have nothing to do with
| derivatives however.
| earleybird wrote:
| However, regular types do: "The Derivative of a Regular
| Type is its Type of One-Hole Contexts"
|
| [0] http://strictlypositive.org/diff.pdf
| sanderjd wrote:
| I really doubt this is where "nth order" comes from
| colloquially.
| js8 wrote:
| There are many examples in physics, for example: https://
| physics.stackexchange.com/questions/310875/second-or...
| bee_rider wrote:
| This is what I've always assumed as well. The feeling of
| "things that usually don't matter but may explode (if it
| turns out the series doesn't converge)" seems to fit the
| expression pretty well.
| coldtea wrote:
| It's simply about looking further down up the casual chain,
| not stopping at the initial cause-effect: thinking about the
| effects of effect themselves (and, in third order, the
| effects of the effects of the effects, and so on).
|
| A simple example of failing to do so and only considering the
| first level cause-effect:
|
| "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".
|
| Here's another one:
|
| Caribbean plantation owners were tired of their relentless
| war against field rats - the rodents were eating into their
| precious sugar cane crops. Come 1872, a chap called W.B.
| Espaut had an original idea: why not bring over a few Indian
| mongooses - those unpretentious mammals known as enthusiastic
| rat hunters? Espaut travelled to India, had some mongooses
| captured and brought them to Jamaica. The problem - it soon
| turned out - was that the mongooses did not just kill rats;
| they killed birds, ate eggs, insects, useful reptiles, even
| small deer fawns. True, the mongooses also hunted and killed
| lots of rats; but they did not kill them all. In fact, the
| rodents continued to multiply - and so did the mongooses.
| Worse, both rats and mongooses carry a disease called
| leptospirosis, which can be lethal to humans. To cut a long
| story short, rather than getting rid of one pest, the hapless
| Hawaiians ended up with two.
| philipov wrote:
| Hawaiians? I thought the second story was set in Jamaica.
| louky wrote:
| Maybe this is actually the fourth-order effect.
| xrd wrote:
| No. It's "one and a half order" thinking, where you leave
| out half of the story, but the story still works for your
| brain.
| coldtea wrote:
| It is. I snipped some parts of the story to simplify it
| for the comment, and left out an important step:
|
| The Jamaican example "grabbed the attention of Hawaiian
| sugar cane planters, who also suffered from the rats.
| Bringing mongooses to Hawaii as natural pest
| exterminators seemed such an elegant idea. "
| iAm25626 wrote:
| "Simpsons did it":
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LuiK7jcC1fY i wonder at
| what point does game theory comes into play instead of
| second order thinking?
| agitator wrote:
| The best, simple, metaphor I can think of is playing out a
| chess game in your head. As in, you make a move, and see how
| the scenario changes, and predict the opponents moves. In
| chess, it's just 2D and one opponent or agent. In the real
| world you need to weigh many possible agents, estimate their
| motivations, and predict their responses. This way you can
| visualize the cascading effects of a decision.
| JohnHaugeland wrote:
| Math isn't characterized by unmeasurable magic phrases
|
| Higher order thinking is a trap phrase for people who want to
| sound deep by filling in details on the fly from their
| imaginations in the clothing of science
|
| Nothing evidence based supports any of this
| marcosdumay wrote:
| You are stepping back and looking how your decision
| consequences will impact the network of causes and
| consequences that exists on the real world.
|
| Root cause analysis is a different thing.
| nerpderp82 wrote:
| Which often involves second order effects.
|
| A -> (caused) B
|
| C -> D
|
| When B and D occur (within a window) -> Error
|
| It is that connection between B and D that needs to be
| discovered.
| pkrumins wrote:
| You're mixing up derivatives (rate of change) and
| approximation (order).
| omginternets wrote:
| I think it roughly amounts to "thinking through the
| implications of the implications".
| drewcoo wrote:
| I think that's 3rd order, actually.
|
| Why does this remind me of Abbot and Costello?
|
| https://youtu.be/sShMA85pv8M?t=64
| omginternets wrote:
| "If x, then y" is one implication, so that's first-order
| reasoning.
|
| "If y, then z" is second-order reasoning.
| hervature wrote:
| You are on the right track. Second order means second
| derivative. So, if we are predicting future positions, using
| acceleration in addition to velocity will always be better.
| Second order is much more difficult because in more than one
| dimension you have to consider how every pair interacts.
| ivanjermakov wrote:
| I found "odds of success" chart hilarious.
| [deleted]
| m0llusk wrote:
| 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.
| RandomLensman wrote:
| 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.
| smckk wrote:
| 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-
| Sta...
| hamter wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| > 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.
| petestream wrote:
| As far as I know one of the arguments for defunding the
| police is that the police is used as a way for those with
| the ability to change things to externalize the
| consequences of their actions.
|
| When for example a lack of housing leads to an increase in
| crime a well funded police prevents those who could
| increase housing from being affected by the crime and they
| will therefor not increase housing. Especially as they get
| many benefits from poverty like cheap labour, a decrease in
| competition and larger premiums on attractive real estate.
|
| So yes I would say they are thinking about the second-order
| effects. At some point I might read some of Thomas Sowell's
| writings but from what I've seen so far he honestly seems
| more of a theologist than a scientist to me.
| kotenshu wrote:
| The same concept is the gist of a lot of 'Basic Economics',
| also by Sowell.. Good intentions are not enough. Solutions to
| one problem will always create incentives for others to
| exploit.
| shaftoe444 wrote:
| 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?".
| atq2119 wrote:
| Ironically, a lot of economics sound-bites are all about
| ignoring first order effects in favor of questionable second
| order effects.
|
| I'm mostly thinking here about deficit spending discussions,
| where it's popular to inject worry about second-order effects
| creating a drag on the economy, e.g., crowding out. Meanwhile,
| it completely ignores the fact that the first-order effects are
| almost always all positive for the economy, e.g. more spending
| directly translates to higher GDP. (Plus, there are second-
| order effects that are positive for the economy as well.)
|
| So yes, by all means try to understand the second-order
| effects, but don't let yourself get hoodwinked by people who
| want you to miss the first-order effects.
| mym1990 wrote:
| Some of this is because the first order effects have come and
| gone, and media is going to try and focus on the most current
| and relevant things. As you move through a timeline, second
| order effects will turn into first order effects and we will
| come up with a new set of second order effects.
|
| Given that, I totally agree with you on the sentiment.
| HardlyCurious wrote:
| Well, logically the second order negative effects of deficit
| spending must overcome the beneficial first and second order
| effects on large enough scales.
|
| Otherwise we could just deficit spend ourselves into
| perpetual prosperity.
| atq2119 wrote:
| There's a subtlety here, though. It should be obvious that
| _too much_ deficit spending has negative second order
| effects overwhelming the first order ones. (An extreme form
| of this: imagine having the government trying to spend
| quintillions each year -- that 's clearly not going to work
| without some massive inflation.)
|
| It is not at all self-evident that the same is true for
| _all_ deficit spending, even on an infinite time horizon.
|
| Consider, for example, that central banks typically aim to
| have a ~2% rate of inflation in the long run. Given that,
| why would it be harmful to forever have a level of deficit
| spending that keeps the _real_ value of the government debt
| constant in the long run? Or, ignoring inflation but
| assuming economic growth, that keeps the ratio of
| government debt to GDP constant in the long run? Why would
| that be harmful?
|
| (Note: If the government was able to successfully run a
| balanced budget indefinitely[0], both of those quantities
| would approach 0 in the limit; some long-run government
| deficit spending is necessary to keep them constant.)
|
| And yes: the stronger claim, which I also support, is that
| deficit spending is an important ingredient for our
| prosperity, because it acts as a sort of "prime mover" for
| pushing up society's overall level of wealth. (As usual,
| there's a balance to this. Too much of a good thing etc.)
|
| [0] There's a lot of historical evidence which suggests
| that this is impossible anyway because it becomes self-
| defeating. Balanced budgets ultimately cause or at least
| contribute to recessions, which cause a budget deficit via
| reduced tax income and increased social services spending.
| blackbear_ wrote:
| Another similar book is "Economics in One Lesson" by Henry
| Hazlitt [1]:
|
| > From this aspect, therefore, the whole of economics can be
| reduced to a single lesson, and that lesson can be reduced to a
| single sentence. The art of economics consists in looking not
| merely at the immediate hut at the longer effects of any act or
| policy; it consists in tracing the consequences of that policy
| not merely for one group but for all groups.
|
| [1]: https://www.amazon.com/Economics-One-Lesson-Shortest-
| Underst...
| jyriand wrote:
| Came here to post about Hazlitt and you've beaten me to it.
| zen_of_prog wrote:
| Yep, for foreign policy as well [1].
|
| [1] https://www.wsj.com/articles/henry-kissinger-is-worried-
| abou...
| EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK wrote:
| After subtracting the cost of the book, and time wasted times
| minimal wage, I highly suspect the average wealth generated by
| reading it is negative.
| tootallgavin wrote:
| Is this your assessment of books like Human Action by Mises?
| It took many months for me to work through both works.
|
| Would you say the same for the books by Spivak or Resnick?
| What about a college degree?
| rocketbop wrote:
| Have you read it? What were your criticisms.
| EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK wrote:
| I've read the marketing article posted to HN, and it sounds
| silly. First order ... second order ... same as all the
| other motivational nonsense.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| _> 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_
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