I worry there’s kind of a definitional drift going on here. I guess Holden doesn’t give a super clean definition in the post, but AFAICT these quotes get at the heart of the distinction:
Sequence thinking involves making a decision based on a single model of the world …
Cluster thinking – generally the more common kind of thinking – involves approaching a decision from multiple perspectives (which might also be called “mental models”), observing which decision would be implied by each perspective, and weighing the perspectives in order to arrive at a final decision. … [T]he different perspectives are combined by weighing their conclusions against each other, rather than by constructing a single unified model that tries to account for all available information.
“Making a decision based on a single model of the world” vs. “combining different perspectives by weighing their conclusions against each other” seems orthogonal to the failure mode you mention. (Which is a failure to account for a mechanism that the “cluster thinker” here explicitly foresees.) I’m not sure if you’re claiming that empirically, people who follow sequence thinking have a track record of this failure mode? If so, I guess I’m just suspicious of that claim and would expect it’s grounded mostly in vibes.
I worry there’s kind of a definitional drift going on here. I guess Holden doesn’t give a super clean definition in the post, but AFAICT these quotes get at the heart of the distinction:
“Making a decision based on a single model of the world” vs. “combining different perspectives by weighing their conclusions against each other” seems orthogonal to the failure mode you mention. (Which is a failure to account for a mechanism that the “cluster thinker” here explicitly foresees.) I’m not sure if you’re claiming that empirically, people who follow sequence thinking have a track record of this failure mode? If so, I guess I’m just suspicious of that claim and would expect it’s grounded mostly in vibes.