
Mental Model: Second Order Thinking - remotists
https://models.substack.com/p/second-order-thinking
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lucraft
Here's a mental model I've discovered that has been useful for me:

"Even if you have cleverly identified a second-order effect in the opposite
direction, it doesn't mean it actually outweighs the magnitude of the first-
order effect – you still have to check."

~~~
wenc
Just to add to that mental model:

In simple systems, first order effects tend to dominate.

In complex systems, higher order effects tend to dominate.

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haltingproblem
The mental model notes are quite interesting to read but applying them is
another matter. I have been reading mental models for a couple decades now and
I honed in on one - invert always invert. This _one_ simple rule has been
really hard to apply.

Let me give an analogy of trying to reason about physical properties from
first principles. This is another popular exhortation - think from first
principles just like Feynman or Fermi. I can think from first principles in
one extremely narrow field where I happen to have half a decade of education
and 20 years of experience. To reason from first principles like Fermi or
Feynman in a broad domain like physics requires a world class mind, a world
class education and a world of experience.

Most mental model writing is akin to consuming youtube fitness porn. It looks
easy to do, you look cool doing it and the end results are just spectacular.
However, like Arnold or David Goggins it requires an inhuman dedication,
purpose, ability to withstand pain, bounce back from trauma and just keep
sacrificing. Most of the time the only person benefiting is the video creator
from the ad-roll.

I appreciate the posts but I now believe these mental models are incredibly
hard to do and like most of the self-improvement/growth hacking genre is just
good for entertainment and commerce 99.99% of the time.

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mlboss
A better method would be 5
whys([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_whys](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_whys)).
Keep asking whys until you discover the root cause. Or in this case until you
discover the larger impact of an event.

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orange_puff
I find that the difference between how I make decisions and how people I
consider smart make decisions is a difference of first order and second order
thinking. In many ways I got lucky. I chose the computer science major and
happened to love it, I became a software engineer and happened to love it. I
did not think very deeply about these decisions. It's ironic because my job is
to think about the control flow of methods, and the potential consequences
that could arise from some current design.

I am trying very hard to integrate second order thinking into my decision
making process.

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motohagiography
Question from me would be, what are the necessary conditions in an
organization to create a culture that rewards recognizing and mitigating
cognitive biases? Imagining that a series of Rationalist interview questions
would seem a bit culty, and run the risk of going full Bridgewater.

~~~
throw1234651234
I would imagine asking "When you approach a problem, do you apply any
techniques to evaluate any cognitive biases that might be applicable" would
elicit some sort of response without upsetting people.

I don't know how important this is for most line employees. As a code monkey,
I rarely have some strong bias besides "Angular is my personal preference over
React" which immediately leads to "Well, should we use React anyway because
the team knows it better and blah blah."

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AnimalMuppet
If you want to be a software engineer instead of a "code monkey", this is part
of it. The software engineer has to be able to see the second order effects of
changes to the code.

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throw1234651234
In my opinion it's almost a given that any senior dev considers these. You
can't be a senior dev / team lead / architect without thinking about how the
system will be affected by decisions in the long run. From "MongoDB is faster,
but it won't integrate with BI as well down the line" to "Well, GCP is great,
but Google has a history of not supporting services in the long run."

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jd_mongodb
Of course MongoDB does integrate with BI these days via its BI connector :-)

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throw1234651234
Haha, well, I won't start an argument given your affiliation, but let's just
say that most BI tools CLAIMED to be able to integrate with Mongo well, but in
the end, we ended up dumping the data into SQL for the BI tools. This was 4
years ago, and we tested about 5 major BI providers and were willing to pay
them ridiculous sums.

With that said, I enjoy Mongo, for its specific use cases.

~~~
jd_mongodb
We built our BI connector a few years ago for all the reasons you outline.
Definitely worth a spin if you have this challenge again. Basically makes
MongoDB look like MySQL (if that floats your boat :-)).

~~~
throw1234651234
I will check it out, thanks.

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trishankdatadog
Nassim Taleb has been saying this forever, he first talked about it in at
least Antifragile IIRC.

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warpech
Is there any software that helps to perform the second order thinking?

~~~
wenc
No, because it's a mental practice. That said, you can use a template.

[https://untools.co/second-order-thinking](https://untools.co/second-order-
thinking)

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josefrichter
well, the article itself mentions it is "an age old idea"..

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nathias
it's called speculation and it gets more speculative with each successive
assumption

