# Second-Order Effects - Deep Dive Definition: Second-order effects are the consequences of your change *after* the immediate outcome — often delayed, indirect, or social. Example: You add an “urgent lane” to speed up delivery. Two weeks later, everything is marked urgent and planning collapses. Why it matters: In complex systems, the first-order effect can look like success while the second-order effect quietly breaks the system. ## A simple way to think First-order: what happens right away? Second-order: what changes because of that change? Third-order: what do people adapt to, once they learn the new rules? ## Common second-order traps - Metrics become targets. - Exceptions become the norm. - The system optimises for what’s rewarded, not what’s intended. - Safety nets become permanent dependencies. ## A lightweight prompt set Before you commit, ask: - If this works, what behaviour will it encourage? - What will people stop doing? - What will get harder for someone else? - What new bottleneck might appear? You don’t need certainty. You need a few plausible futures. ## See Also - [[Trade-offs and Opportunity Cost]] - [[Metrics Become Targets (Goodhart Spiral)]] - [[Decision Debt and Drift]] - [[Policies as Constraints]] - [[Counter-Metric Pair - Experiment]]