Language as Foresight
December 15th, 2025
Lately I've become more acquainted with my old hobby of reading again. I enjoy it, especially learning about language. Language not in the sense of just linguistics or philosophy, but as a combination of both, and how it intersects and bleeds into all our understandings and perceptions of the world.
But one thing I'd like to practice, especially as a tool, is second order thinking. Third order thinking. Fourth order thinking. Nth order thinking, and so on and so forth. It's the fundamental question: if I do something, then what happens? And then what? And so on, ad infinitum.
In Les Miserables, Bishop Myriel gifts the bitter felon Jean Valjean silver candlesticks, and lies to the police to free him. Jean Valjean later becomes the benevolent mayor of Montreuil-sur-Mer.
Decisions I take and make today, what profound effect will they have for the rest of my life? And quite frankly, what is nth order thinking asking of me?
I can certainly say it asks two things:
- Working memory
- Creativity
- Experience
Nth order thinking requires a lot of thought, so let's do it for my capital I have at hand.
Capital
I have $110k dollars in my bank account right now. There are a lot of things I could do with it:
- Spend it
- Burn it
- Invest it
- Donate it
- Do nothing
It's a decision tree of what I can do with it, and how far I want to recurse down each pathway it'll depend.
Naval Ravikant says that we bias towards short-term gratification with long-term pain rather than long-term gratification with short-term pain, and I'm left to agree with that. But what does that mean when making decisions? When we don't consider the nth consequence, does that mean we aren't understanding the long-term gratification in its full scope? Or perhaps the pain of the short-term gratification in it's full scope?
One of the obvious options do nothing with it may seem faulty right now. I'll just get killed by inflation if I do nothing with it. But in the long term scenario, it's actually much better than investing it poorly.
Additionally, as I think things through, the framing of each decision matters a lot. If I frame it as "doing nothing" it gives a passive bleed to it, but if I frame it as "investing in the U.S. government's ability to uphold currency valuation," then that frames it as a more active stance. Which is more true?
In the book Thinking in Bets I was told that the best decisions often can lead to negative outcomes, in other words, the best most correct decision is the probabilistically sound one. If I think in frames, and I say the framing I take on an issue ought to be the one that validates the actual outcome, isn't that categorically incorrect in the lens of thinking in bets?
Whenever we approach a frame, don't we always take a bet? Which way to look at the cylinder: is it a rectangle, or is it a circle? It's tricky to differentiate between the two.
Or perhaps, the framing is that it's both a rectangle, a circle, and a cylinder.
In a systemic way, I think the best course of action when making a decision is to consider all frames when framing the options. Not to go with intuition but to consider all vantages. In the Art of War, it's always best to survey the land and weather before taking action too rashly.
We're pressured in modern society to make quick decisions and to act swiftly, but despite the rush I am still young at the ripe age of twenty-five. There's no need for rush and hurry, especially when it comes to life-altering decisions that will change the course of your life forever.
What I do with one hundred ten thousand dollars can alter the course of my life dramatically, and offer me avenues to a life I never knew. I am in a more consequential and accountable position than I was just two years ago, swadlling myself in my room writing my assignments.
I've been using ChatGPT to do my nth order thinking, but now that I think about it, an average token generator can only be so creative as to see all the pathways that could possibly happen. It can only be as creative as the average of humanity. It's the fringes and edges of our species that give us spectacular results.
We envision Dr. Strange at his peak when he considers fourteen million different timelines. It's the gift of intelligence that allows us to consider the possible futures and place our bets on the most likely one.
I'm understanding too about decision-making as well. The first options look appealing and quick to action on. But there are always more options, right? Look at Shark Tank and how they structure deals on the fly. It's creative work. There's always more options than just the black and white, and there are ways to bucket, split, and divide the options.
If you approach a deal with accountability, then there's a way to do it. Approach a deal with a goal in mind, then there's a way to do it.
Forget the Money for a second.
What's the nth order consequence of picking the way you think?
What's the nth order consequence for not taking accountability over your life?
What's the nth order consequence for taking accountability over your life?
What's the nth order consequence for not forming good mental models?
What's the nth order consequence for forming good mental models?
Language as a Mirror
Why is it that people read a book early on, say, seventeen. Then they read it again at thirty-five, and they feel they "better understand it?"
Perhaps Plato was right in Meno, that all learning is the soul remembering its past lives. To make it more modern, perhaps it's true too that the soul remembers its current life as well.
When we read words, where are the ideas coming from? Where are the conclusions drawn from? Sure, we read words for inspiration, but what I'm getting at is that you have to conjure the image from your experiences.
Language—reading and writing—aren't they mirrors for our soul? To ask ourselves what we've really seen, what we've really experienced, and what we really ought to interpret.
Sure, we can make fictitious words, like LLC, or nations, or things like this, but these things wouldn't hold meaning had we not experiences. A nation is nothing without brothers and sisters. An LLC is meaningless without a judge in court and goods to bargain with.
Sure we can turn to simulacrum and simulation, but what I'm saying is that language fundamentally is tied to contextual reality. I cannot say "acaigar" and have it be meaningful though it is fictitious.
Perhaps "acaigar" can be meaningful in this context, that it refers to the idea that language is tied to our mind's soul and not the author's soul.
Perhaps, when Munger says reading is good for the mind, it is really just a casual reflection of one's life. And it's always good to reflect over ones' life.
Life Experiences + Books = Synthesis
I'd encourage my kids to live a life, then read the books. It's much more meaningful reading a book with life understanding compared to without understanding—I understand Seneca now.
Virtue
Virtue is high signal leverage. Accountability and Responsibility are high levers to pull to change the outcome of someone's life.
Think about words that will pull your life in a different direction. But why is it that not everyone who hears the word "responsibility" becomes responsible?
Because they must undergo experiences that exact that responsibility onto them.
In Lee Kuan Yew's memoir A Singapore Story, he recalls being pulled aside by Japanese soldiers and herded onto a beach with thousands of young men. With quick thinking he was able to excuse himself, but he nearly died.
When he was young, he was the leader of the group of boys in his neighborhood. He was responsible for these boys and if they got hurt. Accountable. It's the early lever pulled from an early age that allowed him to—with compounding—learn that art of self-leadership and leadership.
When you are accountable for the lives of other people, only then can you really become a leader.
Fiction as the highest lever
I used to read a lot of non-fiction, but after this reflection I am beginning to believe stories are the highest lever pulls you can do for self-reflection. They are the closest to pulling from your own life experiences.
Telling experiences almost forces you to reflect on your own life. Fiction is the most important genre to read in my opinion.
Why is it that the oldest texts and most influential texts in our human canon are in fact stories?
Why is it that, for even philosophical texts, that forewards include descriptions of the author's life?
I do find it important that Wittgenstein's family was likely rich and abusive. I do find it meaningful that Ludwig Wittgenstein's brother committed suicide. I find it meaningful that he was a priest in World War One. Estranged from his family.
Wittgenstein's search for meaning was philosophical investigations, but perhaps it's more telling that it is his lived tragedy.
The limits of my language are the limits of my world.
Perhaps that's why the best books address the human condition—they provide structure for all of us.