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Comment by noduerme | Hacker News Reader

Aaaand third order thinking is skimming this and knowing it's about as deep as the conversation I tried to have at a bar three hours ago when I explained I was just playing "devil's advocate" to someone who was already playing devil's advocate.

Whenever I get desperate enough to start a blog full of deep thoughts that only gets posted here, watch out HN.

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Indeed. Unfortunately the article lost me when I saw the graph of "extent to which you consider second order and subsequent consequences" vs "odds of success".

Aren't totally meaningless graphs the best though? ;) You're just bitter because you're already fourth order thinking... you assessed the whole thing as a dumbass waste of time.

Also, never show people graphs when /ok, never mind

especially when the graph has a slope so you can calculate the derivative as an example of 2nd order thinking.

Which, by the way, seems to be heading towards infinity, which isn't right at all.

I generally skip articles from Farnam Street. Once I saw the source, I already knew what the comments would be. ;)

Yeah I like Shane, but FS seems it has too narrow a focus and he has tried really hard to squeeze every last drop out of these mental models.

What’s the problem with FS?

y'know goddammit that's it. I'm gonna start a blog and cross post every day to HN and tell you all lots of really amazing observations about life you never even thought of before.

Just kidding hahshahah I'd never do that

edit but only because I'm lazy

Their podcast 'The Knowledge Project' is essentially a book tour for authors flogging their new book 'Framework/Mental Models to achieve X'.

Modern day magic beans to make you smarter.

It's like Tim Ferris, filtered for the "intellectual" topics. Yawn

Yeah, I think that about sums it up. I started listening to Tim Ferris years ago because there were a few decent episodes, but I hit a breaking point after one-too-many horrendous episodes.

I discovered FS a couple years ago and have enjoyed some of them, but I'm very close to unsubscribing from this one. There have been a lot of low quality episodes as well as some negative quality: goofy web3 technobabble.

FS articles are deep in a shallow way, kinda like if Aristotle directed the "Avengers" (movie)... hehehe.

Cynicism is not a substitute for wisdom.

What? Wisdom is expensive! If you're fresh out of wisdom, or just low on cash, you can TOTALLY use cynicism 1:1 in most recipes.

Or Worcestershire sauce. Everything tastes better with Worcestershire sauce.

How cynical!

A healthy skepticism can be a useful way to avoid vacuous thinking.

Skepticism requires critical thinking and engagement. You can't be a proper skeptic about something without taking the time to understand the domain you're being skeptical of, approach it in good faith from first principles as much as possible, and accept criticism in kind.

Most people just won't bother, because cynicism and snark provide a better endorphin hit, and the internet has trained people to associate that feeling with likelihood of correctness (what Stephen Colbert called "truthiness" back in the day.)

the first things skeptics should be skeptical about is skepticism itself: are they right in being skeptical about what they are skeptical about?

The first thing skeptics question are sentences which begin with

>> the first things skeptics should be skeptical about

from there I guess we just migrate up to talking shit about bloated blog posts where one dude mumbles his observations about deep thoughts.

If in their analysis, they come to the conclusion that they shouldn't be skeptical, does that make them the best skeptic or the worst?

the best if their skepticism is carefully done.

Yes, I completely agree. The author should have applied it to his "odds of success vs extent to which you consider second order and subsequent consecuences" graph and saved everybody the time.

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