TRC_0FF

Money quote: "Another way of thinking about this is that proximate causes (the cause immediately preceding an event) are easier to reason about than remote causes (causes that are further away from the event at question, but that contribute through the chain of causality). Remote causes are often complex and intertwined with a huge number of factors (think: the Fed raising the interest rate, and affecting the whole economy in one fell swoop); proximate causes are simpler to think about. And so it is usually more effective to focus on proximate causes, because any change in the macro-environment that will affect you will likely show up as a proximate cause first. The way I like to think about this is that remote causes are akin to the interactions of water molecules in a vapour cloud — you’ll have to spend a huge amount of analytical power to figure out if they’ll ultimately affect your windows. The effective person won’t bother with any of that; they would instead watch for the movement of water droplets on glass."

This goes somewhat against the grain with current-popular second-order thinking - when you try to take into account unintended consequences - but this article argues that it is more important to pay attention to immediate causes and environment, to solve the right problem.