General Thinking Tools: Mental Models to Solve Difficult Problems | Hacker News Reader

General Thinking Tools: Mental Models to Solve Difficult Problems

fs.blog

131 pointsBerislavLopac8 comments

Cool stuff. I'm disappointed to see that none of philosopher Dan Dennett's recent work [1] on this topic has come into these pages though. There's some overlap especially in the "thought experiment" realm, and it gets a rigorous philosophical treatment which for some is the key to this kind of problem-solving. (disclaimer: I was in the cohort of undergrads that Dennett used to review his chapters).

1: https://www.amazon.com/Intuition-Pumps-Other-Tools-Thinking/...

I call these forms of wisdom, or second-order intellect. First order intellect is insights you get through direct study of the world, wisdom is insights you get through meta-study of forms of intellect.

My underlying model of cognition extends this to 8 different levels, ending with consciousness itself. But that's getting ahead of ourselves. Third order intellect is the study of ego, how we get in our own way. Fourth order intellect is the study of identity, the forms we use to actually consider ourselves.

The rest of them concern the nuts and bolts of perception.

Haven't read the details yet but if OP is here I would recommend renaming "second-order thinking" to "second-step thinking." Second-order, in the mathematical sciences, has a connotation which is likely contrary to what you intend. When speaking about something that is not literally expanded in a power series, it usually references something that is much less important that the most important contributer.

This is probably because Howard Marks popularized the idea under that name in "The Most Important Thing". He looks like FS's main source in the detail piece (https://www.fs.blog/2016/04/second-level-thinking/).

I think he does mean it as an analogy to the math concept, like ~x being first order and ~x^2 being second order for x near zero; x dominates but x^2 (the "second order") gets you closer to the truth. And similarly for x^3, x^4, ..., x^n.

It's probably intended to be analogous to something like second-order logic[1]. Where first-order logic is about individual elements and second-order logic is about relations.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second-order_logic

That's a very cool list. Two more: reduction to absurdity and divide and conquer. They're probably the most worn tools in my own mental toolbox.

Very cool. Thanks!

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