What are described as pattern of thinking or methodologies to help us decide what to do?
This guide explores everything you need to know about mental models. By the time you’re done, you’ll think better, make fewer mistakes, and get better results. On this page, you’ll we’ll cover: What Are Mental Models?Mental models are how we understand the world. Not only do they shape what we think and how we understand but they shape the connections and opportunities that we see. Mental models are how we simplify complexity, why we consider some things more relevant than others, and how we reason. A mental model is simply a representation of how something works. We cannot keep all of the details of the world in our brains, so we use models to simplify the complex into understandable and organizable chunks. Learning to Think BetterThe quality of our thinking is proportional to the models in our head and their usefulness in the situation at hand. The more models you have—the bigger your toolbox—the more likely you are to have the right models to see reality. It turns out that when it comes to improving your ability to make decisions variety matters. Most of us, however, are specialists. Instead of a latticework of mental models, we have a few from our discipline. Each specialist sees something different. By default, a typical Engineer will think in systems. A psychologist will think in terms of incentives. A biologist will think in terms of evolution. By putting these disciplines together in our head, we can walk around a problem in a three-dimensional way. If we’re only looking at the problem one way, we’ve got a blind spot. And blind spots can kill you. Here’s another way to think about it. When a botanist looks at a forest they may focus on the ecosystem, an environmentalist sees the impact of climate change, a forestry engineer the state of the tree growth, a business person the value of the land. None are wrong, but neither are any of them able to describe the full scope of the forest. Sharing knowledge, or learning the basics of the other disciplines, would lead to a more well-rounded understanding that would allow for better initial decisions about managing the forest. In a famous speech in the 1990s, Charlie Munger summed up the approach to practical wisdom through understanding mental models by saying: “Well, the first rule is that you can’t really know anything if you just remember isolated facts and try and bang ’em back. If the facts don’t hang together on a latticework of theory, you don’t have them in a usable form. You’ve got to have models in your head. And you’ve got to array your experience both vicarious and direct on this latticework of models. You may have noticed students who just try to remember and pound back what is remembered. Well, they fail in school and in life. You’ve got to hang experience on a latticework of models in your head.” A Latticework of Mental ModelsTo help you build your latticework of mental models so you can make better decisions, we’ve collected and summarized the ones we’ve found the most useful. And remember: Building your latticework is a lifelong project. Stick with it, and you’ll find that your ability to understand reality, make consistently good decisions, and help those you love will always be improving. The Core Mental Models1. The Map is Not the Territory 2. Circle of Competence 3. First Principles Thinking 4. Thought Experiment 5. Second-Order Thinking 6. Probabilistic Thinking 7. Inversion 8. Occam’s Razor 9. Hanlon’s Razor The Mental Models of Physics and Chemistry1.
Relativity 2. Reciprocity 3. Thermodynamics 4. Inertia 5. Friction and Viscosity 6. Velocity 7. Leverage 8. Activation Energy 9.
Catalysts 10. Alloying The Mental Models of Biology1. Evolution Part One: Natural Selection and
Extinction 2. Evolution Part Two: Adaptation and The Red Queen Effect The evolution-by-natural-selection model leads to something of an arms race among species competing for limited resources. When one species evolves an advantageous adaptation, a competing species must respond in kind or fail as a species. Standing still can mean falling behind. This arms race is called the Red Queen Effect for the character in Alice in Wonderland who said, “Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place.” 3. Ecosystems 4. Niches 5.
Self-Preservation 6. Replication 7. Cooperation The Prisoner’s Dilemma is a famous application of game theory in which two prisoners are both better off cooperating with each other, but if one of them cheats, the other is better off cheating. Thus the dilemma. This model shows up in economic life, in war, and in many other areas of practical human life. Though the prisoner’s dilemma theoretically leads to a poor result, in the real world, cooperation is nearly always possible and must be explored. 8. Hierarchical Organization 9.
Incentives 10. Tendency to Minimize Energy Output (Mental & Physical) The Mental Models of Systems Thinking1. Feedback Loops 2. Equilibrium 3. Bottlenecks 4. Scale 5. Margin of Safety 6. Churn 7. Algorithms 8. Critical mass 9. Emergence 10. Irreducibility 11. Law of Diminishing Returns The Mental Models of Numeracy1. Distributions 2. Compounding 3. Sampling 4. Randomness 5. Regression to the Mean 6. Multiplying by
Zero 7. Equivalence 8. Surface Area 9. Global and Local Maxima The Mental Models of Microeconomics1. Opportunity Costs 2. Creative Destruction 3. Comparative Advantage 4. Specialization (Pin Factory) 5. Seizing the Middle 6. Trademarks, Patents, and Copyrights 7. Double-Entry Bookkeeping 8. Utility (Marginal, Diminishing, Increasing) 9. Bribery 10. Arbitrage 11. Supply and Demand 12. Scarcity 13. Mr. Market The Mental Models of Military and War1. Seeing the
Front 2. Asymmetric Warfare 3. Two-Front
War 4.
Counterinsurgency 5. Mutually Assured Destruction The Mental Models of Human Nature and Judgment1. Trust 2. Bias from Incentives 3. Pavlovian Association 4. Tendency to Feel Envy & Jealousy 5. Tendency to Distort Due to Liking/Loving or Disliking/Hating 6. Denial 7. Availability Heuristic 8. Representativeness Heuristic a. Failure to Account for Base
Rates b. Tendency to Stereotype c. Failure to See False Conjunctions 9. Social Proof (Safety in Numbers) 10. Narrative Instinct 11. Curiosity Instinct 12. Language Instinct 13. First-Conclusion Bias 14. Tendency to Overgeneralize from Small Samples 15. Relative Satisfaction/Misery Tendencies 16. Commitment & Consistency Bias 17. Hindsight Bias 18. Sensitivity to Fairness 19. Tendency to Overestimate Consistency of Behavior (Fundamental Attribution Error) 20. Influence of Stress (Including Breaking
Points) 21. Survivorship Bias 22. Tendency to Want to Do Something (Fight/Flight, Intervention, Demonstration of Value, etc.) 23. Falsification / Confirmation Bias The modern scientific enterprise operates under the principle of falsification: A method is termed scientific if it can be stated in such a way that a certain defined result would cause it to be proved false. Pseudo-knowledge and pseudo-science operate and propagate by being unfalsifiable – as with astrology, we are unable to prove them either correct or incorrect because the conditions under which they would be shown false are never stated. Which of the following is the first step in making an ethically responsible decision?Step 1: Identify the Facts
Given that ethical issues often arise because of a lack of sufficient information or evidence, as well as disagreements about the facts, the first step in the ethical decision-making process is an explicit call for identification of the facts.
Which of the following best describe ethics?First, ethics refers to well-founded standards of right and wrong that prescribe what humans ought to do, usually in terms of rights, obligations, benefits to society, fairness, or specific virtues.
What reasoning is reasoning about what we should believe?Moral reasoning applies critical analysis to specific events to determine what is right or wrong, and what people ought to do in a particular situation. Both philosophers and psychologists study moral reasoning.
What are the benefits of ethical decisionEthical decisions generate and sustain trust; demonstrate respect, responsibility, fairness and caring; and are consistent with good citizenship. These behaviors provide a foundation for making better decisions by setting the ground rules for our behavior.
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