The Great Mental Models

by Shane Parrish

  This concept is demonstrated in sport as well. To be successful at a professional level in any sport depends on some necessary conditions. You must be physically capable of meeting the demands of that sport, and have the time and means to train. Meeting these conditions, however, is not sufficient to guarantee a successful outcome. Many hard-working, talented athletes are unable to break into the professional ranks.

  In mathematics they call these sets. The set of conditions necessary to become successful is a part of the set that is sufficient to become successful. But the sufficient set itself is far larger than the necessary set. Without that distinction, it’s too easy for us to be misled by the wrong stories.

  Technology is fine, but the scientists and engineers only partially think through their problems. They solve certain aspects, but not the total, and as a consequence it is slapping us back in the face very hard.

  Barbara McClintock1

  The People Who Appear in this Chapter

  Hardin, Garrett.

  1915-2003 - American ecologist and philosopher. The common thread in his work was an interest in bioethics.

  Cleopatra VII Philopator.

  69-30 BCE - She was the last Ptolemy to rule Egypt and has been talked about ever since. The subject of numerous biographies, histories, plays, and movies, she is one of history’s true legends.

  Wollstonecraft, Mary.

  1759-1797 - English writer and philosopher. She wrote a huge variety of works, from novels and histories to philosophy and children’s books. Her daughter Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein.

  Second-Order Thinking

  Almost everyone can anticipate the immediate results of their actions. This type of first-order thinking is easy and safe but it’s also a way to ensure you get the same results that everyone else gets. Second-order thinking is thinking farther ahead and thinking holistically. It requires us to not only consider our actions and their immediate consequences, but the subsequent effects of those actions as well. Failing to consider the second- and third-order effects can unleash disaster.

  It is often easier to find examples of when second-order thinking didn’t happen—when people did not consider the effects of the effects. When they tried to do something good, or even just benign, and instead brought calamity, we can safely assume the negative outcomes weren’t factored into the original thinking. Very often, the second level of effects is not considered until it’s too late. This concept is often referred to as the “Law of Unintended Consequences” for this very reason.

  We see examples of this throughout history. During their colonial rule of India, the British government began to worry about the number of venomous cobras in Delhi. To reduce the numbers, they instituted a reward for every dead snake brought to officials. In response, Indian citizens dutifully complied and began breeding the snakes to slaughter and bring to officials. The snake problem was worse than when it started because the British officials didn’t think at the second level. Second-order effects occur even with something simple like adding traction on tires: it seems like such a great idea because the more you have the less likely you are to slide, the faster you can stop, and thus the safer you are. However, the second-order effects are that your engine has to work harder to propel the car, you get worse gas mileage (releasing more detrimental carbon dioxide into the atmosphere), and you leave more rubber particles on the road.

  This is why any comprehensive thought process considers the effects of the effects as seriously as possible. You are going to have to deal with them anyway. The genie never gets back in the bottle. You can never delete consequences to arrive at the original starting conditions.

  «Stupidity is the same as evil if you judge by the results.»

  Margaret Atwood 2

  In an example of second-order thinking deficiency, we have been feeding antibiotics to livestock for decades to make the meat safer and cheaper. Only in recent years have we begun to realize that in doing so we have helped create bacteria that we cannot defend against.

  In 1963, the UC Santa Barbara ecologist and economist Garrett Hardin proposed his First Law of Ecology: “You can never merely do one thing.”3 We operate in a world of multiple, overlapping connections, like a web, with many significant, yet obscure and unpredictable, relationships. He developed second-order thinking into a tool, showing that if you don’t consider “the effects of the effects,” you can’t really claim to be doing any thinking at all.

  When it comes to the overuse of antibiotics in meat, the first-order consequence is that the animals gain more weight per pound of food consumed, and thus there is profit for the farmer. Animals are sold by weight, so the less food you have to use to bulk them up, the more money you will make when you go to sell them.

  The second-order effects, however, have many serious, negative consequences. The bacteria that survive this continued antibiotic exposure are antibiotic resistant. That means that the agricultural industry, when using these antibiotics as bulking agents, is allowing mass numbers of drug-resistant bacteria to become part of our food chain.

  _

  Effect of effects: the original purpose of using antibiotics to increase cattle size led to the unintended negative consequence of creating an environment which lets drug-resistant bacteria thrive.

  High degrees of connections make second-order thinking all the more critical, because denser webs of relationships make it easier for actions to have far-reaching consequences. You may be focused in one direction, not recognizing that the consequences are rippling out all around you. Things are not produced and consumed in a vacuum.

  «When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the Universe.»

  John Muir4

  Second-order thinking is not a way to predict the future. You are only able to think of the likely consequences based on the information available to you. However, this is not an excuse to power ahead and wait for post-facto scientific analysis.

  Could these consequences of putting antibiotics in the feed of all animals have been anticipated? Likely, yes, by anyone with even a limited understanding of biology. We know that organisms evolve. They adapt based on environmental pressures, and those with shorter life cycles can do it quite quickly because they have more opportunities. Antibiotics, by definition, kill bacteria. Bacteria, just like all other living things, want to survive. The pressures put on them by continued exposure to antibiotics increase their pace of evolution. Over the course of many generations, eventually mutations will occur that allow certain bacteria to resist the effects of the antibiotics. These are the ones that will reproduce more rapidly, creating the situation we are now in. — Sidebar: Second-Order Problem

  Second-order thinking teaches us two important concepts that underlie the use of this model. If we’re interested in understanding how the world really works, we must include second and subsequent effects. We must be as observant and honest as we can about the web of connections we are operating in. How often is short-term gain worth protracted long-term pain?

  Second-Order Problem

  Warren Buffett used a very apt metaphor once to describe how the second-order problem is best described by a crowd at a parade: Once a few people decide to stand on their tip-toes, everyone has to stand on their tip-toes. No one can see any better, but they’re all worse off.

  _

  Buffett, Warren.

  “Letter to Shareholders, 1985.” BerkshireHathaway.com. Retrieved from: http://www.berkshirehathaway.com/letters/1985.html

  Let’s look at two areas where second-order thinking can be used to great benefit:

  Prioritizing long-term interests over immediate gains

  Constructing effective arguments

  Second-order thinking and realizing long-term interests:

  This is a useful model for seeing past immediate gains to identify long-term effects we want. This is often a conflict for us, as when we choose to forgo the immediate pleasure of candy to improve our long-term health. The first-or
der effect is this amazing feeling triggered by pure sugar. But what are the second-order effects of regular candy consumption? Is this what I want my body or life to look like in ten years? Second-order thinking involves asking ourselves if what we are doing now is going to get us the results we want.

  Finding historical examples of second-order thinking can be tricky because we don’t want to evaluate based solely on the outcome: “It all turned out well, so he must have thought through the consequences of his actions.” Even if you can glimpse the long-term gain from your short-term pain, there is no guarantee you are going to get there.

  In 48 BC, Cleopatra of Egypt was in a terrible position.5 Technically co-regent with her brother, in a family famous for murdering siblings, she was encamped in a swampy desert, ousted from the palace, stuck with no solid plan for how to get back. She was Queen, but had made a series of unpopular decisions which left her with little support, and which gave her brother ample justification for trying to have her assassinated. What to do?

  At the same time the great Roman general Caesar arrived in Egypt, chasing down his enemy Pompey and making sure the Egyptians knew who really was in charge on the Mediterranean. Egypt was an incredibly fertile, wealthy country, and as such was of great importance to the Romans. The way they inserted themselves in Egypt, however, made them extremely unpopular there.

  _

  In order to meet Caesar and develop an alliance, yet barred from the palace, Cleopatra organized an elaborate plot to smuggle herself in wrapped in a cloth and stuffed in a basket.

  In order to survive, Cleopatra had to make some decisions. Should she try to work things out with her brother? Should she try to marshal some support from another country? Or should she try to align herself with Caesar?

  In Cleopatra: A Life, Stacy Schiff explains that even in 48 BC at the age of 21, Cleopatra would have had a superb political education, based on both historical knowledge and firsthand exposure to the tumultuous events of life on the Mediterranean. She would have observed actions taken by her father, Auletes, as well as various family members, that resulted in exile, bribery, and murder from either the family, the Romans, or the populace. She would have known that there were no easy answers. As Schiff explains, “What Auletes passed down to his daughter was a precarious balancing act. To please one constituency was to displease another. Failure to comply with Rome would lead to intervention. Failure to stand up to Rome would lead to riots.”

  In this situation it was thus imperative that Cleopatra consider the second-order effects of her actions. Short-term gain might easily lead to execution (as indeed it already had for many of her relatives). If she wanted to be around for a while, she needed to balance her immediate goals of survival and the throne, with the future need for support to stay on it.

  In 48 BC Cleopatra chose to align herself with Caesar. It seems likely she would have known the first-order effects of this decision: Namely that it would anger her brother, who would increase his plotting to have her killed, and that it would anger the Egyptian people, who didn’t want a Roman involved in their affairs. She probably anticipated that there would be short-term pain, and there was. Cleopatra effectively started a civil war, with a siege on the palace that left her and Caesar trapped there for months. In addition, she had to be constantly vigilant against the assassination schemes of her brother. So why did she do it?

  Developing Trust for Future Success

  Trust and trustworthiness are the results of multiple interactions. This is why second-order thinking is so useful and valuable. Going for the immediate payoff in our interactions with people, unless they are a win-win, almost always guarantees that interaction will be a one-off. Maximizing benefits is something that happens over time. Thus, considering the effects of the effects of our actions on others, or on our reputations, is critical to getting people to trust us, and to enjoy the benefits of cooperation that come with that.

  –

  To learn more about how we build trust in relationships see:

  Ostrom, Elinor and Walker, James, eds. Trust and Reciprocity: Interdisciplinary Lessons from Experimental Research. New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2003.

  In reality we will never know for sure. We can only make an educated guess. But given that Cleopatra ruled Egypt quite successfully for many years after these events, her decision was based on seeing the effects of the effects. If she could somehow make it through the short-term pain, then her leadership had much greater chances of being successful with the support of Caesar and Rome than without it. As Schiff notes, “The Alexandrian War gave Cleopatra everything she wanted. It cost her little.” In winning the civil war Caesar got rid of all major opposition to Cleopatra and firmly aligned himself with her reign.

  Being aware of second-order consequences and using them to guide your decision-making may mean the short term is less spectacular, but the payoffs for the long term can be enormous. By delaying gratification now, you will save time in the future. You won’t have to clean up the mess you made on account of not thinking through the effects of your short-term desires. — Sidebar: Developing Trust for Future Success

  Constructing an effective argument: Second-order thinking can help you avert problems and anticipate challenges that you can then address in advance.

  For example, most of us have to construct arguments every day. Convincing your boss to take a chance on a new form of outreach, convincing your spouse to try a new parenting technique. Life is filled with the need to be persuasive. Arguments are more effective when we demonstrate that we have considered the second-order effects and put effort into verifying that these are desirable as well.

  In late 18th-century England, women had very few rights. Philosopher Mary Wollstonecraft was frustrated that this lack of rights limited a woman’s ability to be independent and make choices on how to live her life. Instead of arguing, however, for why women should get rights, she recognized that she had to demonstrate the value that these rights would confer. She explained the benefits to society that would be realized as a result of those rights. She argued for the education of women because this would in turn make them better wives and mothers, more able to both support themselves and raise smart, conscientious children.

  Her thoughts, from A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, are a demonstration of second-order thinking:

  Asserting the rights which women in common with men ought to contend for, I have not attempted to extenuate their faults; but to prove them to be the natural consequence of their education and station in society. If so, it is reasonable to suppose that they will change their character, and correct their vices and follies, when they are allowed to be free in a physical, moral, and civil sense.6

  Empowering women was a first-order effect of recognizing that women had rights. But by discussing the logical consequences this would have on society, the second-order effects, she started a conversation that eventually resulted in what we now call feminism. Not only would women get freedoms they deserved, they would become better women, and better members of society.

  A word of caution

  Second-order thinking, as valuable as it is, must be tempered in one important way: You can’t let it lead to the paralysis of the Slippery Slope Effect, the idea that if we start with action A, everything after is a slippery slope down to hell, with a chain of consequences B, C, D, E, and F.

  Garrett Hardin smartly addresses this in Filters Against Folly:

  Those who take the wedge (Slippery Slope) argument with the utmost seriousness act as though they think human beings are completely devoid of practical judgment. Countless examples from everyday life show the pessimists are wrong…If we took the wedge argument seriously, we would pass a law forbidding all vehicles to travel at any speed greater than zero. That would be an easy way out of the moral problem. But we pass no such law.7

  In practical life, everything has limits. Even if we consider second and subsequent effects, we can only go so far. During waves of Prohibition fever in the United S
tates and elsewhere, conservative abstainers have frequently made the case that even taking the first drink would be the first step towards a life of sin. They’re right: It’s true that drinking a beer might lead you to become an alcoholic. But not most of the time.

  Thus we need to avoid the slippery slope and the analysis paralysis it can lead to. Second-order thinking needs to evaluate the most likely effects and their most likely consequences, checking our understanding of what the typical results of our actions will be. If we worried about all possible effects of effects of our actions, we would likely never do anything, and we’d be wrong. How you’ll balance the need for higher-order thinking with practical, limiting judgment must be taken on a case-by-case basis.

  Conclusion

  We don’t make decisions in a vacuum and we can’t get something for nothing. When making choices, considering consequences can help us avoid future problems. We must ask ourselves the critical question: And then what?

  Consequences come in many varieties, some more tangible than others. Thinking in terms of the system in which you are operating will allow you to see that your consequences have consequences. Thinking through a problem as far as you can with the information you have allows us to consider time, scale, thresholds, and more. And weighing different paths is what thinking is all about. A little time spent thinking ahead can save us massive amounts of time later.

  The theory of probability is the only mathematical tool available to help map the unknown and the uncontrollable. It is fortunate that this tool, while tricky, is extraordinarily powerful and convenient.

  Benoit Mandelbrot1