Garrett Hardin

Garrett Hardin is referenced as the UC Santa Barbara ecologist and economist behind the “First Law of Ecology” — “You can never merely do one thing” — which The Great Mental Models Volume 1 — General Thinking Concepts cites as the foundation for second-order thinking. Hardin’s point, per the book, is that we operate in a world of overlapping, web-like connections, and if you don’t consider “the effects of the effects,” you can’t really claim to be thinking at all. He sits in the book’s lineage of systems thinkers alongside John Muir (“when we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else”).

His book Living Within Limits sits in Kyle’s anti-library (wiki/books-to-read): it argues that Earth’s finite carrying capacity demands confronting overpopulation taboos, extending his tragedy-of-the-commons thinking to global ecology and economics.

Context: Garrett Hardin (1915–2003) was an American ecologist best known for his 1968 essay “The Tragedy of the Commons,” which argued that shared resources are inevitably overexploited when individuals act in self-interest.

Where this appears

• The Great Mental Models Volume 1 — General Thinking Concepts — Hardin’s First Law of Ecology (“You can never merely do one thing”) grounds the chapter on second-order thinking.
• Living Within Limits — Hardin’s own book (in Kyle’s anti-library), extending his commons thinking to population and global ecology.