second order thinking
Almost everyone can anticipate the immediate results of their actions.This is first-order thinking !
Second order thinkng is :
Thinking further about the subsequent effects of their actions
pg. 106: the great mental models :
Shane Parrish
First-order thinking is about stimulus => reaction only;
If I do this: I get that:
If you do this, I will do this for you!
Buckminster Fuller gives a great analogy on superiority of second-order thinking using an analogy :
Something hit me very hard once, thinking about what one little man could do. Think of the Queen Elizabeth — the whole ship goes by and then comes the rudder. And there’s a tiny thing at the edge of the rudder called a trim tab. It’s a miniature rudder. Just moving the little trim tab builds a low pressure that pulls the rudder around. Takes almost no effort at all. So I said that the little individual can be a trim tab. Society thinks it’s going right by you, that it’s left you altogether. But if you’re doing dynamic things mentally, the fact is that you can just put your foot out like that and the whole big ship of state is going to go. So I said, “Call me Trim Tab.”
The truth is that you get the low pressure to do things, rather than getting on the other side and trying to push the bow of the ship around. And you build that low pressure by getting rid of a little nonsense, getting rid of things that don’t work and aren’t true until you start to get that trim-tab motion. It works every time. That’s the grand strategy you’re going for. So I’m positive that what you do with yourself, just the little things you do yourself, these are the things that count. To be a real trim tab, you’ve got to start with yourself, and soon you’ll feel that low pressure, and suddenly things begin to work in a beautiful way. Of course, they happen only when you’re dealing with really great integrity.
In this metaphor , the ship's rudder is the first-order effect ;
you need lot and lot of energy to deal with first-order effects!
First-order thinking is about stimulus => reaction only;
If I do this: I get that:
If you do this, I will do this for you!
Buckminster Fuller gives a great analogy on superiority of second-order thinking using an analogy :
Something hit me very hard once, thinking about what one little man could do. Think of the Queen Elizabeth — the whole ship goes by and then comes the rudder. And there’s a tiny thing at the edge of the rudder called a trim tab. It’s a miniature rudder. Just moving the little trim tab builds a low pressure that pulls the rudder around. Takes almost no effort at all. So I said that the little individual can be a trim tab. Society thinks it’s going right by you, that it’s left you altogether. But if you’re doing dynamic things mentally, the fact is that you can just put your foot out like that and the whole big ship of state is going to go. So I said, “Call me Trim Tab.”
The truth is that you get the low pressure to do things, rather than getting on the other side and trying to push the bow of the ship around. And you build that low pressure by getting rid of a little nonsense, getting rid of things that don’t work and aren’t true until you start to get that trim-tab motion. It works every time. That’s the grand strategy you’re going for. So I’m positive that what you do with yourself, just the little things you do yourself, these are the things that count. To be a real trim tab, you’ve got to start with yourself, and soon you’ll feel that low pressure, and suddenly things begin to work in a beautiful way. Of course, they happen only when you’re dealing with really great integrity.
In this metaphor , the ship's rudder is the first-order effect ;
you need lot and lot of energy to deal with first-order effects!
Trim-tab is the
second-order effect : Rudder is the first-order effect!
Second-order effect is much much more powerful than the first-order as with less energy you can turn more weight around!
Second-order effect is much much more powerful than the first-order as with less energy you can turn more weight around!
Authors
farnam street
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