I believe we encounter second-order thinking in mundane day-to-day activities too which are generally categorized as 'instinct'; Say we drop the key under the table and we know before hand that we would hit our head if we get up under the table and so we crawl back(Or may be we've hit our head earlier and it becomes reinforcement learning?).
Then there are tasks which are totally dependent upon multi-order thinking like a game of chess (or) most other brain games.
I wonder if we could create a system to collect different second-order thinking decisions for different day-to-day activities to serve as a decision making tool powered by collective human knowledge?
The Jamaican example "grabbed the attention of Hawaiian sugar cane planters, who also suffered from the rats. Bringing mongooses to Hawaii as natural pest exterminators seemed such an elegant idea. "
A simple example of failing to do so and only considering the first level cause-effect:
"The British government, concerned about the number of venomous cobras in Delhi, offered a bounty for every dead cobra. Initially, this was a successful strategy; large numbers of snakes were killed for the reward. Eventually, however, enterprising people began to breed cobras for the income. When the government became aware of this, the reward program was scrapped. When cobra breeders set their now-worthless snakes free, the wild cobra population further increased".
Here's another one:
Caribbean plantation owners were tired of their relentless war against field rats – the rodents were eating into their precious sugar cane crops. Come 1872, a chap called W.B. Espaut had an original idea: why not bring over a few Indian mongooses – those unpretentious mammals known as enthusiastic rat hunters? Espaut travelled to India, had some mongooses captured and brought them to Jamaica. The problem – it soon turned out – was that the mongooses did not just kill rats; they killed birds, ate eggs, insects, useful reptiles, even small deer fawns. True, the mongooses also hunted and killed lots of rats; but they did not kill them all. In fact, the rodents continued to multiply – and so did the mongooses. Worse, both rats and mongooses carry a disease called leptospirosis, which can be lethal to humans. To cut a long story short, rather than getting rid of one pest, the hapless Hawaiians ended up with two.