The strategy of conflict is condensed instrumental rationality. Much of the content is covered elsewhere, but I don’t know of a superior qualatative presentation.
Talking about qualatative presentations, thinking physics is a set of hundreds of physics problems, designed to show how important conservation laws and infinitesimals are. The problems are all solvable with some careful thought, and cover quite a deal of ground. I wish more books were written in this way.
I am kind of suprised you didn’t reference causal inference here to just gesture at the task in which we “figure out which variables are directly relevant—i.e. which variables mediate the influence of everything else”. Are you pointing to a different sort of idea/do you not feel causal inference is adequate for describing this task?
Also, scenario 1 and 2 seem fairly close to the “linear” and “non-linear” models of innovation Jason Crawford described in his talk “The Non-Linear Model of Innovation.” To be honest, I prefered his description of the models. Though he didn’t cover how miraculous it is that somehow the model can work. That, to a good approximation, the universe is simple and local.