
Second-Order Thinking: What Smart People Use to Outperform (2016) - arunc
https://fs.blog/2016/04/second-order-thinking/
======
busyant
I think this article is saying:

    
    
      - 1st order thinkers primarily see causes and *direct* effects.
      - 2nd order thinkers frequently see causes and their *indirect* effects.
    

I guess that seems like a reasonable idea.

For what it's worth, the truly exceptional people I've met in life had a
different quality.

* When most people are presented with a difficult/challenging problem, they soon give up.

* The most exceptional people that I've met just kept hammering away after the rest of us had stopped. Most of the time, they failed, but if you have some aptitude and you keep hammering, you have a better chance to make breakthroughs that the rest of us don't make.

Just as an example, I had worked for a company that used X-ray crystallography
as a tool for drug-development. I would be in meetings with crystallographers
where we discussed the technical problems they were having in trying to grow
crystals. The crystallographers were all smart and talented, but when we had
group meetings, there was only one guy who would float suggestion-after-
suggestion-after-suggestion, long after everyone else had run out of ideas. I
don't think he was any "smarter" than anyone else in the room, but he just
could not shut himself off. He was _relentless._ He went on to make some
important contributions to the field.

~~~
SquishyPanda23
It's worth pointing out that blindly hammering away on the wrong problem is a
failure mode for many intelligent people.

The key is not just sticking to things, but also having enough taste to know
when to drop a problem.

~~~
busyant
> blindly hammering away on the wrong problem is a failure mode for many
> intelligent people. The key is not just sticking to things, but also having
> enough taste to know when to drop a problem.

Agreed. In my original comment, I was trying to imply that those exceptional
people _did_ (ad you say) have enough "taste" to know when to stop, but I
don't think I made that aspect clear.

The crystallographer I was talking about definitely failed more often than
not, but I was always struck by his ability to keep floating reasonable ideas
after the rest of us had reached what we thought was an intellectual cul-de-
sac.

If you have ever read the transcript of Richard Feynman's speech "There's
plenty of room at the bottom" [1] you get the same feeling--here's an
incredibly bright person who can't seem to stop when he's told that "x is
impossible."

I love this part of Feynman's speech: _" The reason the electron microscope is
so poor is that the f- value of the lenses is only 1 part to 1,000; you don't
have a big enough numerical aperture. And I know that there are theorems which
prove that it is impossible, with axially symmetrical stationary field lenses,
to produce an f-value any bigger than so and so; and therefore the resolving
power at the present time is at its theoretical maximum. But in every theorem
there are assumptions. Why must the field be axially symmetrical? Why must the
field be stationary? Can't we have pulsed electron beams in fields moving up
along with the electrons? Must the field be symmetrical? I put this out as a
challenge: Is there no way to make the electron microscope more powerful?_"

[1]
[https://www.zyvex.com/nanotech/feynman.html](https://www.zyvex.com/nanotech/feynman.html)

~~~
kqr
I think the deeper explanation here is that unusually clever people know how
to locate the unquestioned assumptions and have no problem throwing them out.
Or put another way, they ask questions of the form, "I know this sounds dumb
at first, but hear me out. Why don't we..."

Most problems come with a slew of constraints we take for granted, and then a
set of constraints we consciously impose on the solution because we think it
helps. Most reasonably bright people try lifting those conscious constraints,
but rarely touch the less apparent ones.

I think that more neatly explains what you both are going for with "gives up
too soon" (not identifying all constraints), "hammering away" (also
investigating non-obvious constraints), yet "have enough taste to stop" (there
are no more constraints to lift).

~~~
croon
Couldn't agree more here.

I've been encountering this effect in rapid succession in the last couple of
years as a new parent.

First few weeks: Everything is new and you have no firm assumptions other than
what you've observed from the outside of other families, so you try to build a
new model on how your child behaves, how you should react and the routines
needed to function as a family.

A month in and every other month going forward for the next year: Everything
you think you know about your child has changed, and all (most) assumptions
about what works when comforting, putting to sleep, and feeding goes out the
window and you start over building a new model.

Of course _everything_ doesn't change, but this scenario of developmental
changes has really ingrained the idea in me how easy it is to make assumptions
(deliberately and not) that you assume are static truths. It has made me go
back and reexamine everything from old wives tales I learned through osmosis
as a child through my politics through technical decisions in my work.

Whether you consider Jobs, Musk, Wozniak, Brin, Page, etc creators/innovators
or something, I think a lot if not most successful ventures has come from
reevaluating assumed truths, ranging from the market, state of technology, or
paradigms. I'm not saying you should throw out everything old, but merely that
learning from history should be a scheduled process, not a one-off.

Sorry for the unwarranted rant, but your comment just resonated with my own
experiences.

~~~
kqr
Musk, in particular, appears to me to be refreshingly naive when confronted
with a problem. His suggestions sometimes sound like something a kid would
say, and that's not a bad thing.

------
jjk166
This isn't second order thinking. Deciding to eat a salad when you're hungry
instead of a candy bar because you value health over immediate satisfaction is
discipline, not intelligence. You're still thinking linearly about the costs
and benefits of the decision, you're just placing more emphasis on the longer
term costs and benefits. Second order thinking refers to holistically looking
at a situation to see emergent behaviors, which allows the intelligent to see
things that are not intuitive. Second order thinking would be choosing a salad
when you're hungry so that salad becomes associated with relieving hunger,
thus making it easier to choose salads going forward, which will create a
positive feedback loop keeping you on your diet. It's the self-interaction of
the decision that makes it qualitatively more complex than first order
thinking.

~~~
coldtea
> _This isn 't second order thinking. Deciding to eat a salad when you're
> hungry instead of a candy bar because you value health over immediate
> satisfaction is discipline, not intelligence._

Nope, it is. Instead of sticking to a solution that only solves the immediate
problem (hunger, first order), he changed the solution based on the adverse
side-effects of going with the first solution (hunger solved, but health
worsened, second order).

> _Second order thinking would be choosing a salad when you 're hungry so that
> salad becomes associated with relieving hunger, thus making it easier to
> choose salads going forward, which will create a positive feedback loop
> keeping you on your diet._

Nope, that's motivation engineering, which is orthogonal to second order
thinking.

~~~
jerf
"Nope, it is. Instead of sticking to a solution that only solves the immediate
problem (hunger, first order), he changed the solution based on the adverse
side-effects of going with the first solution (hunger solved, but health
worsened, second order)."

Yup. This just happens to be something that we get pounded into us (not
without merit) a lot, so it's something that people understand fairly well.

Consequently, as a gateway into understanding higher-order thinking, it's
really poor, because this "knowledge" has all but bypassed rational thinking
at this point due to being repeated for us to the point that it's been
internalized.

I'd say this is why the trivial examples are also uninteresting to people. If
it's something obvious enough that everyone has figured it out, making it an
accessible example, it also doesn't seem like higher order thinking.

~~~
coldtea
Well, here's a non-trivial example, but still easy to follow, that describes
second order effects quite well:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cobra_effect](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cobra_effect)

------
aphextron
This closely mirrors my own thesis on genius.

There are first level, direct thinkers. This is the lower 50% of all people,
although everyone is capable of it. It is direct and without irony, sarcasm,
or self reflection. Think slapstick comedy, or superhero movies.

The second level is in 4th wall breaking, analogy, simile, anything which
takes "getting" the joke beyond the purely visual. Most people who consider
themselves "smart" fall here. About the 50th to 90th percentile of
intelligence/creativity.

Third level is hard to describe with words by it's nature. It's all about
indirection. Not making an analogy, but taking the analogy for granted and
riffing off of that. Most truly genius artists, comedians, musicians,
scientists, etc. live at this level. Think the comedy of someone like Dave
Chappelle, the music of Bob Dylan, or scientists like Stephen Hawking.

The fourth level is unattainable for humans as a constant state. The very best
third level people can just _barely_ get glimpses of it, and bring those
glimpses back down for us to see. These are our all time great works of art,
and generational scientific breakthroughs. Picasso, Bach, and Einstein are the
archetypes here. But what we (the second level masses) are able to see is just
a projection, like a 3 dimensional representation of a 4 dimensional shape.
The effect is still mind-blowing, but unless you're at that 3rd level it's
impossible to really conceive its' true nature. Genius is in the ability to
translate those brief fleeting glimpses of the 4th level by a 3rd level person
into something intelligible by the 2nd and 1st.

~~~
goatlover
> It is direct and without irony, sarcasm, or self reflection. Think slapstick
> comedy, or superhero movies.

RDJ/Tony Stark would like a word with you.

~~~
coldtea
Irony, sarcasm, and self reflection at the context of the movie, not the
character.

RDJ/Tony Stark's "Irony, sarcasm, and self reflection" are still a flat
description of an ironic, sarcastic etc character.

Not irony, sarcasm etc superimposed on the design/presence of the character
itself within the movie.

------
DoreenMichele
The lack of second order thinking seems to be the essence of what ails modern
medicine.

"I have an infection!"

"Time for antibiotics!"

Don't bother to ask "And then what?"

Some populations are given antibiotics so regularly that it isn't uncommon for
them to develop antibiotic resistant infections and even lose their colon to
E. Coli.

We are given drugs with a multi page handout covering side effects, the
doctors take credit for short term improvement -- "Look! Your latest infection
got better!" \-- then blame your _condition_ for long term decline. No one
stops to wonder if it's the drugs -- even though in some cases we absolutely
know the drugs caused X.

~~~
mschuller
Second order thinking was thought further by Hans Jonas [1], a philosopher
known for his contribution to environmentalism. In his book "The Imperative of
Responsibility"[2] he argues that because of our technological breakthroughs
(e.g. medicine) it's so easy to make impacts beyond your control that thinking
through whatever you do has to become the core of a new ethic.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Jonas](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Jonas)

[2]
[https://www.press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/I/bo59...](https://www.press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/I/bo5953283.html)

~~~
DoreenMichele
I'm an environmental studies major. It's been very helpful in trying to
develop mental models for thinking about my health issues.

~~~
Pamar
This is interesting: can you provide some examples?

~~~
DoreenMichele
I've had a class in Hydrology and also read "Salt Dreams" (about water in
Southern California) and a book about the history of water development in
Fresno County.

Modern people often seem to have mental models of the world where a river has
a set place, similar to a road. This is not accurate.

Water percolates down into the soil. Rivers meander. The amount and type of
plants impacts rain patterns.

Water is constantly moving and cycles through the air and moves through the
ground, both largely invisible to the naked eye, but critical to the pieces we
can readily see. Plus, its movement occurs in a larger context, such as the
Moon causing ocean tides.

The human body's relationship to water is similar. It isn't just limited to
how much you drink, how much you sweat and how much you pee.

Like the Earth's crust, your skin takes in water. aso, for example, you can
get hydrated with a bath, especially a salt water bath. This is helpful to
understand if you are so sick that you are having trouble taking anything by
mouth.

My condition predisposes me to retain fluids. I've made progress on reducing
the chronic bloat in part because I have mental models for how water moves
through the environment.

Invasive species disrupt ecosystems. This is not unlike infection.

Trying to fix a thing like that is far more complicated than our current
medical mental model of just giving out antibiotics for infection.

On some island, someone wanted to eradicate mosquitoes. They poisoned the
mosquitoes, which all died. Small animals ate they poisoned mosquitoes and
they died too. This went through several layers, almost like the Biblical
plagues (deconstructed and analyzed by modern science on some TV show).

Those sorts of things influence my concept of the body's relationship to
disease. I don't accept the mental model that "Well, just add antibiotics to
the mix and voila! All better now!"

We know antibiotics kill gut flora. We know gut flora are critical to our
digestion and even help provide certain nutrients. We know that killing gut
flora not only screws up digestion, it also promotes the overgrowth of
Invaders like E. Coli.

Yet we currently do not have a policy of making sure to remediate what
antibiotics do to the body. We assume the gut will just repair itself over
time without active intervention.

Some individuals know to at least eat yogurt, but doctors do not give out
handouts with recommendations for "The Post Antibiotics Diet."

And then we kind of shrug if someone "mysteriously" develops serious and
chronic gut issues. Broader society also seems to fail to understand the gut
as the foundation of the immune system.

------
alan-crowe
This reminds me of Frédéric Bastiat and his essay "That Which is Seen, and
That Which is Not Seen". Nicely formatted at
[http://bastiat.org/en/twisatwins.html](http://bastiat.org/en/twisatwins.html)

The article notes that "It’s often easier to identify when people didn’t
adequately consider the second and subsequent order impacts." That failure to
consider the second order impacts is what Bastiat refers to as "That Which is
Not Seen"

~~~
seleniumBubbles
That is such a fantastic article. It’s timeless: it was published in 1850, but
it remains more relevant than ever.

------
dalbasal
I think _people_ are generally good at 2nd order thinking, and thinking within
complex systems with multiple causes, effects and subsequent effects.
Especially so if we're immersed and experienced in a field.

We are bad at thinking this way in groups, relatively. We're especially bad
when these groups are political. If we're deciding on arming rebels, the
political dynamics are the 2nd order effects that dominate thinking, not the
war... especially if it's a small foreign war that's unlikely to reach home.

The rebel field commander has no problem recognising these strategic dynamics.

~~~
alok-g
>> I think _people_ are generally good at 2nd order thinking

>> We are bad at thinking this way in groups, relatively.

Wow! This seems to answer a long-standing question I have had. I think I can
now work out the mathematics of this, given appropriate amount of time. I
think this is it! Thanks.

~~~
dalbasal
good luck to you.

------
evrydayhustling
That is quite a lot of words to say "think a few steps ahead".

~~~
rygxqpbsngav
\+ Look beyond the obvious and conventional and what it is saying that the
second order thinkers see unconventional things that might sound absurd to
conventional first order thinkers. And do it with good precision, otherwise,
they might end up with failed results too.

------
js8
I am not against "higher-order thinking" but in my experience it often leads
to wishful thinking and self-deception. Especially political arguments are
prone to disagreements on higher order effects (as opposed to effects that are
directly observable and measurable).

For example, take basic income. Opponents of basic income argue that it will
lead to inflation (second-order effect) and it will have no effect. Proponents
of basic income argue that it will lead to higher velocity of money (second-
order effect) and it will have positive economic effect.

Often the magnitude of second-order effects is not clear (often they are large
sums of small numbers, and somewhat non-linear), and this leads to
disagreements even among reasonable people. It's very easy to see 2nd order
effect of some type and not another. So I would be cautious to rely on it too
much.

(This is also partly a reason why I am in favor of empiricism as opposed to
rationalism - humans often have bad intuitions when we just think about
things.)

~~~
mjburgess
Yes, there is this common reverse problem:

If we allow X to speak, his ideas will spread and Y will be harmed. So banning
X is best.

But why not:

Banning X will cause a back reaction in X supporters and spread X's message
leading Y to be harmed.

Or any other of a number of possibilities.

There is a fallacy of "hypothetical higher order danger justifies first order
violence (/action)" \-- where the higher order thinking is mostly ideological
fantasy.

~~~
Retra
Often that fallacy is argued on the basis of artificially reduced complexity.

"Some first order actions can be justified by higher order danger" is often
transliterated as "this first order action is justified by higher order
danger" precisely because it drops all the subtlety and pretense for higher-
order reasoning that the original speaker intended as an unspoken follow-up.

People often seem to allow others only the luxury of starting a thought, but
never finishing it.

------
hcarvalhoalves
A good book on the topic is "Thinking in Systems" by Donella Meadows [1]. It's
a catalog of common system patterns and how they behave to give you some tools
to answer the "then what?".

[1] [https://www.amazon.com/Thinking-Systems-Donella-H-
Meadows/dp...](https://www.amazon.com/Thinking-Systems-Donella-H-
Meadows/dp/1603580557)

------
fogetti
Ordinary people don't like when they are getting asked "And then what?"

Socrates kept asking questions. That was his defining characteristic. We know
how that went...

~~~
pojzon
I think the story of socrates has repeated itself multiple times over the
course of history.

Very often men who were ahead of their times were prosecuted for being right.

------
markdog12
1st order thinking dominates our politics and economics. And worse, there's no
incentive for 2nd order thinking from our politicians, since the electorate
doesn't go beyond 1st order. Further, pre-existing assumptions are usually
backed by 1st order thinking, but not 2nd.

Not a bad little book promoting 2nd order thinking in economics:
[https://fee.org/resources/economics-in-one-
lesson/](https://fee.org/resources/economics-in-one-lesson/)

~~~
humanrebar
> 1st order thinking dominates our politics and economics.

At least in U.S. politics, we have a surplus of second order thinking. We
can't get mundane immediate compromises made because people are worried about
identities, factions, and trust issues, which are all second order concerns.

For instance, it's not controversial to think that H1B visas are a mess, but
legislation on specific immigration reform tends to get stymied by the desire
for comprehensive immigration reform. Why not just fix one immigration
problem? Because immigration proponents and restrictionists do not trust each
other that the piecemeal reforms _they_ want will be passed the next time
around.

The same pattern comes up in plenty of other controversial issues such as
abortion, tax reform, and lately judicial appointments.

~~~
bena
I think it's a tactic.

Politicians use whatever order thinking is most convenient to promote their
ideas.

nth-order thinking is great for debate because you can use increasingly
tenuous connections to justify your position.

------
blattimwind
> The ability to think through problems to the second, third, and nth order—or
> what we will call second-order thinking for short—is a powerful tool that
> supercharges your thinking.

Clearly it should be called higher-order thinking.

~~~
ilaksh
Just "planning" seems adequate to me.

~~~
whatshisface
If the author called it planning then everyone would realize that they had
already heard of it...

People might also realize that with every additional step of reasoning the
chance that you got it right decays exponentially.

~~~
mStreamTeam
That's why people make multiple plans and backup plans

------
teekert
"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."

Unless you want to make it look like a beneficial regime change but your
actual wish is long term destabilization of a region ;)

~~~
radosc
To stimulate sponsoring country's economy and cement electoral choices in the
face of a common threat.

~~~
teekert
Indeed, but you can hide behind your 1st order thought, play dumb and get the
vote of the 1st order thinkers.

------
keyle
Just make sure though that you don't end up in 'paralysis by analysis'.

Sometimes, the bullish people that don't overthink things end up in far
greater situation (through a rollercoaster) than if they just sat there and
pondered about all the consequences.

------
vincentmarle
I love to do this, keep iterating on n-th order thoughts, figuring out
emergent behavior etc etc (systems mapping is actually a quite useful
technique to do this) but at some point you need to scale it back down to the
1st order to actually get things done.

It's fun to fantasize where the industry will be heading 10-30 years from now,
but figuring out what needs to be done tomorrow is more important.

~~~
kaycebasques
Honest question, just for the sake of respectful debate, not trying to be
obnoxious:

Can you actually derive emergent properties from nth-order thinking? I think
they're both fascinating topics, but when I think about emergent properties of
human biology, I struggle to imagine how I could have derived them from nth-
order logic. To me, emergent properties seem like something you have to
observe first, not something that you can reach from any kind of reason.
Emergent properties are so awe-inspiring precisely because you can't predict
them when you go down a level or two.

~~~
ellius
I doubt that anyone frequently predicts emergent properties precisely, but I
still think that thoughtfully considering them is beneficial. There is a line
in "Clean Architecture" to the effect that every architectural decision is
akin to a shot in pool: you aren't merely trying to sink the ball, you're also
trying to line up the next shot. This is true of decisions generally, and I
think it's infinitely easier to do if you're thinking of navigating complex,
dynamic systems rather than simply imagining "I'll do A because A –> B."

~~~
cellular
You might like this video that shows emergent behaviour that I find
fascinating: [https://youtu.be/gaFKqOBTj9w](https://youtu.be/gaFKqOBTj9w)

------
empath75
The best way to exercise second order thinking is to play turn based games
like chess or even magic the gathering. You can’t be good at those games
without considering actions several turns ahead and aggregating a tremendous
amount of knowledge about the game, and you get almost immediate feedback on
how good your thought process actually was.

~~~
T-A
[http://theconversation.com/does-playing-chess-make-you-
smart...](http://theconversation.com/does-playing-chess-make-you-smarter-a-
look-at-the-evidence-76062)

~~~
empath75
I don't think playing games makes you smarter. I think it practices a certain
kind of thinking, and practicing thinking makes you better at that kind of
thinking.

------
karmakaze
Temporal thinking is something that needs to be exercised. It's relatively
easy to think 'what if', 'and then what' but much harder to think these
through when each next level overwrites the previous one, it's not a matter of
adding up the effects of static layers. Successive effects invalidate former
ones to varying degrees. It's really just running thought experiments, but
running them deeper and simulating for longer time periods.

The most visual demonstration of most of these talking points is in the game
of Go. Being able to 'read' the board is seeing the good/bad outcome of a
world of possibilities.

The other really good comment made was about quantifying second order effects.
Being able to imagine higher order effects without being able to estimate them
leads to analysis paralysis.

------
bartimus
So you're successfully applying 2nd level order thinking on your job. Other's
don't do it. You're working towards your goal. Achieving your 2nd level order
thinking successes.

But the rest of your colleagues don't understand what you're doing. They don't
see your vision. They live in the 1st order thinking world. To them your
choices don't make sense. They don't understand how the successes came from
the 2nd level choices.

They'll say: "Why are you eating a salad? You're hungry! Take a chocolate bar!
It has much more calories so it will better solve your problem."

You try to explain. They don't get it. They wave it off like some ridiculous
story.

How can you effectively sell your 2nd order thinking ideas to 1st order
thinking people?

------
Nemi
Another way to look at Second-Order thinking is whether someone can understand
C pointers intuitively. Joel Spolsky once wrote that understanding pointers is
an aptitude, and I believe he was right. It is the same concept as second-
order thinking - being able to follow several layers of indirection. Recursion
and regular expressions fall into this group as well. I find otherwise very
bright individuals that don't have something in their brain that allows them
to grasp these concepts. I think it is how the brain is wired, like good hand-
eye coordination or fast memory recall (aka being witty). Just because your
brain is good at one of those traits doesn't mean you are good at all of them.

------
rygxqpbsngav
This is closely related to 'Chaos theory' too. There is a great correlation.

"Small differences in initial conditions yield widely diverging outcomes for
dynamical systems"

My interpretation is that second order thinkers see unconventional things of
how a dynamic system behaves to fine tune it initially and intervene when it's
moving in wrong direction to drive it in the direction that yields desired
results.

> What do the consequences look like in 10 minutes? 10 months? 10 Years? 1

> Extraordinary performance comes from seeing things that other people can’t
> see.

Although experience plays a key role, the second order still have to think
that aren't yet experienced by them based on the patterns they can recognize.

------
idlewords
And here I was using regular thinking like an idiot.

~~~
peteradio
D'oh!

------
henryw
The first quote by Ray Dalio is from his most excellent book
[https://www.amazon.com/Principles-Life-Work-Ray-
Dalio/dp/150...](https://www.amazon.com/Principles-Life-Work-Ray-
Dalio/dp/1501124021)

I've listen to the section for personal principles on audible 5 times now, and
I will probably keep repeating it at least a couple times a year.

------
mnm1
This definitely explains why we have things like the drug war (and other
idiotic pseudo wars) and can't even learn the second and third order effects
of such prohibition after the mass experiment with alcohol prohibition in the
twenties and thirties. In fact, it explains a lot if not most bad policy
decisions. I'm convinced regular people are simply incapable or unwilling to
consider second, third, and higher order effects of their actions and
politicians especially take advantage of this to push through atrocious
policies. Healthcare policy is another that comes to mind. Retirement saving.
Lack of infrastructure spending. Anti vaccine idiots. Etc. Etc. I mean towards
people being to incompetent and stupid rather than unwilling, as there is
plenty of evidence for that (three quarters of people are purported to not be
able to name the three branches of government), but who knows? The end result
is the same. Stupid thinking driving forward a stupid populace. I didn't know
there was a term for what the stupid were missing till now.

------
hn_throwaway_99
While I agree with most of this, this can also lead to a kind of "analysis
paralysis". I've seen a good number of "first order thinkers" succeed because
they just plow through stuff, and when the indirect consequences appear that
they didn't originally think about, they plow through that, too.

------
makerescape
I call it S1 (simple 1, arrogant and ignorant) vs S2 (simple 2, which is
elegant and informed), but I’ve only found it possible to attain S2 after
navigating the complexity between these two points, which implies that I’m
often guilty of S1 thinking as the genesis of getting to S2, if I have the
sand for it.

~~~
idlewords
And S3 is where you store all your memories.

~~~
makerescape
And S10 is a _smart_ phone. I think I’m seeing the matrix.

------
JoshCole
This article reminds me of tree searches. One of the results we've found in
various AI related investigations into the playing of games is that a good
policy selects the action which maximizes the value of a future state. A good
value for an action corresponds with where that action would eventually leave
the agent. The article points out that a person will get better results by
expanding the tree out to a depth beyond one. This is usually true.
Interestingly, humans are real time and so we also experience contexts in
which this is not true. Expansion takes precious time. Thus, one of the
cognitive biases which sometimes steers us away from more optimal answers.

------
termau
This is interesting, I'm pretty sure we all do this to a large extent, I would
say one thing that I've noticed when everything was going sideways was I
learnt that in the absence of a good viable outcome doing nothing was a very
effective strategy.

Not without its risks either, but in some cases my act of doing nothing
allowed what I had done to progress (where I knew it would not have a
detrimental impact and couldn't see any path forward that was effective, I
just circled the wagons and waited. Surprisingly effective.

------
keepmesmall
3rd order thinkers see direct causes, indirect causes, direct effects and
indirect effects, which establishes the need for setting up an internal
feedback loop to strengthen the causes classified as direct (coming from
within) and to power the process of distinguishing between direct and indirect
causes. Without this feedback loop the experience of indirect causes results
in an experience of loss of agency.

1st order thinkers know what they do, 2nd order thinkers know what they do to
others, 3rd order thinkers know what they want to do. I'm leaving an
interpolation which is both obvious, crucial, trivial and infinitely deep to
the reader.

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_bxg1
Not terribly insightful... I expected something about meta-reasoning -
thinking about your own thinking - but it was more along the lines of just,
"smart people don't have tunnel vision when making decisions".

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mrhappyunhappy
Maybe world policy makers should think to the nth order before making bad
policies.

~~~
sverige
I think they do, but I suspect that their goals are bad, which is why we have
the world we have now.

~~~
seleniumBubbles
It’s worth noting here that an astonishing number of prominent politicians and
politically-involved elites are still avowed (and publicly acknowledged)
Malthusians. So when trying to understand their actions, keep in mind, their
goals may in fact be to “reduce the global population to a more sustainable
level.”

------
mmiliauskas
Here is my attempt at second order thinking -- where did he pull out that odds
of success exponentially depending on "second order thinking" graph?

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indweller
Has anyone read the book "The Most Important Thing", which is mentioned in the
blog? If so, can you give a review of it?

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eismcc
Interesting article.

While there may be nature/nurture arguments here, IMO, first order thinkers
are trained to be that way by society and markets. Someone who doesn’t think
ahead is more “useful” as a consumer. Someone who doesn’t think ahead and
question, gets along with others with less friction.

------
NicoJuicy
So, to put it in a meme:
[https://youtu.be/CkdyU_eUm1U](https://youtu.be/CkdyU_eUm1U) ( not really a
smart movie - dude where's my car, but it thought about that the entire time)

------
tiku
My second order thinking holds me back in some ways, because when I think of
something new, immediately I start thinking of ways why it would not work etc.

------
munin
Smart people get everyone else to bog themselves down with "second-order
thinking" perpetually tying themselves in mental knots wondering endlessly
"what happens next" and "should I or shouldn't I." That is because smart
people that get shit done will not think twice, do the thing, and then quickly
re-evaluate the results and proceed apace. Smart people that get shit done,
outperform by actually executing. You can't predict the future. Asking "but
what about in ten years" is the height of hubris. The only answer can be "who
knows."

~~~
whynotminot
Please don't give this man a company.

I agree that smart, effective people do generally have a bias toward action.
But not in the bull in the shop "thinking twice is a waste of my time" sort of
way you're describing.

~~~
hinkley
Yeah I was thinking this is how Erie Canal, love canal and more boring things
like Clinton Lake happened.

------
kjbfojbejib
Slightly off-topic: what app is used to create low-fi sketches like the
illustration in this article? I'd love to use these in my product work.

~~~
23d
You could make images like these easily with Krita on most platforms or
Procreate on an iPad/iPhone.

------
WheelsAtLarge
Another way to say this is to evaluate the consequences of your actions. Good
advice but don't confuse people by renaming it.

------
omega3
There is a famous saying in chess which captures this: "If you find a good
move, look for a better one".

------
coconut_crab
I think it is just one skill of critical thinking, why stop at second order
when third order thinking is even better?

~~~
ludston
You have an opportunity to practice second order thinking in regards to using
second/third order thinking here.

------
DubiousPusher
I'm not sure how much I agree with this article. In my opinion, most people's
practical problems don't come from an inability to consider the later
consequences of an action. They're either things completely beyond our control
or they come from an inability to discipline ourselves to do the responsible
thing given the consequences. People don't take the easy road because they're
dumb. They take it because the hard road is hard. And as far as I can tell,
gaining or building discipline oneself is nearly impossible. (To be clear, I'm
not some hard core libertarian that thinks everyone has made their bed and
therefore should sleep in it. I think the struggle to conform one's life to
productive positive decisions is ubiquitously difficult and just telling
people their problems are their own fault has probably never helped a
situation.)

Regarding less daily matters like foreign policy, I actually think this kind
of second order thinking is a trap. It's the pride that goeth before the fall.
It leads us to believe problems that are too complex, too variable and too
opaque are within the grasp of our rationalim if only we think hard enough.
Robert McNamara didn't advise Kennedy and LBJ deeper and deeper into the
Vietnam war because he lacked second order thinking skills. He did so
precisely because he had like 10th order thinking skills.

~~~
pitaj
> To be clear, I'm not some hard core libertarian that thinks everyone has
> made their bed and therefore should sleep in it. I think the struggle to
> conform one's life to productive positive decisions is ubiquitously
> difficult and just telling people their problems are their own fault has
> probably never helped a situation.

Not super relevant to the topic at hand, but I am a very hardcore libertarian,
and I have to say that this is not an accurate representation of libertarian
views.

It's not your fault, this seems to be a common misconception among many, even
some of those who call themselves libertarian.

Libertarian philosophy does indeed stress personal responsibility as a part of
voluntary interactions with others. However, this doesn't mean that a person's
status is deterministic. Many of people's problem are not their own fault:
hell, many of the problems are caused by the state, which is why we hate it.
The problems that aren't caused by the state (scarcity, some inequality,
externalities, etc) ate very difficult to solve, and state attempts to fix
them usually result in even worse outcomes.

To bring it back around to second-order thinking, it's very important in
politics especially to be able to see these unforseen consequences of
political action. First-order thinking is how we end up with things like the
PATRIOT Act and other emotionally-driven policies.

~~~
DubiousPusher
Fair enough. Let me rephrase that. I'm not some hardcore puritan...

------
timwaagh
infinity-order thinking: hanging all the self-improvement gurus from the
highest tree.

------
0_gravitas
Why didn't I think of that!?

------
balena
BS alert

------
photon_lines
OK, so to follow up with the author of the piece and to maybe throw in a
little 2nd order thinking into this equation:

“Second-Order Thinking: What Smart People Use to Outperform” - the author
makes a broad claim that all smart people use second order thinking to
outperform those who aren’t smart.

Questions: What makes the author credible, and what data / research does
he/she have in order to support the claim? He/she cites Howard Marks as an
example, but is Howard Marks really enough to support the claim for such a
broad and generalized statement? What about the fact that even people who try
to think deeply tend to get it wrong often-times, which has been shown to be
true over and over again? Example:

[https://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/23/magazine/dont-blink-
the-h...](https://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/23/magazine/dont-blink-the-hazards-
of-confidence.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all)

That’s not to say that I disagree with the premise – I think that in general,
this piece puts forward a hypothesis that smart people are deep thinkers who
think critically and deeply about the effects of their decisions, while those
that aren’t so smart might not put such an effort in. There is some truth to
the statement the author puts forward, but by no means is this the
differentiating factor between smart people and the not-so-smart. I’m not an
expert in this field either, but I’ve read a lot of stuff from Feynman,
Einstein, and the geniuses of the field, and I find that some of the things
which differentiate them from the rest are:

1\. Deep curiosity. They were incredibly interested in finding out how things
work / solving a problem. 2\. Persistence: They worked hard to achieve what
they wanted to achieve and didn’t give up. 3\. They used their visual cortex /
visual systems a lot. Tesla for example would have live simulated
conversations with other people and build things inside of his head. Einstein
is in the same boat - he would spend hours trying to visualize concepts. This
makes total sense from my perspective. We have a heck of a lot more capacity
to process information using our visual cortex than other areas in out brains.
We can process something like 10 million bits per second vs. a much lower
capacity in other brain areas. When you read silently for example, you're only
processing around 45 bits per second.

Apologies for the long write up here – I guess I might be over-analyzing
things a bit, but I just don’t really see the point of this article, nor do I
see it pointing out the real differentiating factors between those that are
‘smart’ and those that aren’t, and I think the author is making a very broad
statement and doesn’t have any data to support his/her claim. Howard Marks
also by the way is not a class above other investors. He still uses a value-
based approach in a time where the value based strategy doesn’t really
guarantee maximum returns. It doesn’t mean that he isn’t bright – he
definitely is. I just don’t think that this presents enough evidence or data
to support the generally broad claim made in the article.

------
revskill
So, most of Robots are smart ?

------
dillondoyle
In politics I've heard higher order thinking called 'running the traps.' Would
love to learn of a way to apply derivatives or higher order thinking to
polling and the decisions I make in my work.

Take Trump in 2015 if voters were less likely to say they support Trump in
polling which 2nd order affected Clinton campaign malpractice to not campaign
in MI etc, which gave Trump election.

