> This just in from the eggheads: actions have consequences.

Everyone can understand that actions have (first-order) consequences. The problem is that most people stop there. But consequences also have consequences, those are second-order consequences. And you can follow the reasoning to nth-order consequences.

The better game players (chess for example but can applied to anything) simply go deeper in the search tree and try to average out all outcomes... that's what higher-order thinking is. You go deeper in the tree and you backtrack.