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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.

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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

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