Mental Models

All models are wrong, but some are useful. George Box.

A mental model is a thought process about how something works in the real world. They can help to shape behavior and set an approach to solving problems (a personal algorithm). The world is confusing when your model of the world is wrong. Millions of mental models exists, and every discipline has their own set. Some of them overlap and might be called differently.

Each one act as a lens through which to view the world. You can use them to navigate the territory of reality, and just like different types of maps (some simplistic and cartoonish, others realistic and highly detailed) can be more or less useful for different purposes, even maps that you know are not literally correct can still have value.

• Mental Models: The Best Way to Make Intelligent Decisions
• A Searching and Fearless Intellectual Inventory
• Mental Models I Find Repeatedly Useful
• Useful Models
• The Big Mental Models
• Julian Spahiro’s Mental Models
• Mental models for designers
• Mental Models Box

Interesting Models

A list of mental models that I find interesting and useful. List comes from Andrew Conner.

Reality & Models

• Map is not the territory: Models of reality are useful tools but shouldn’t be mistaken for reality itself.
• False models: Some frameworks can be useful even when literally false.
• Primitives are building blocks: Basic patterns that enable more complex systems to be built.
• Complex vs complicated systems: Some systems can be analyzed, others can only be probed.
• [[Emergence]] - Complex systems produce behaviors that can’t be reduced to their parts.

Knowledge & Truth

• Truth seeking is iterative: Understanding emerges through successive approximations.
• Epistemic modesty: Recognizing the limits of our knowledge and certainty.
• Base rates: Start with typical probabilities before considering specifics.
• Seeing clearly doesn’t mean solving most effectively: [[Problem Solving| Understanding a problem doesn’t necessarily provide its solution]]
• Salience doesn’t equal truth: What grabs attention isn’t necessarily what matters.

Perspective & Understanding

• Reality tunnel: Your perspective limits what truths you can perceive.
• Bridges: Ideas that connect different states of understanding.
• Congruent bridges: When different paths lead to the same insight.
• Categorization errors: The boundaries we draw between concepts are artificial and often misleading.
• Transposed Model: Testing ideas by applying them in different contexts.

Systems & Incentives

• [[Incentives]] matter: Show me the incentives and I’ll show you the outcomes.
• Pumps: Systems that reliably produce desired outcomes.
• Uncaptured externalities: Hidden costs that aren’t accounted for in decisions.
• Skin in the game: Having personal stakes improves decision quality.
• Efficiency vs Resiliency: The fundamental tradeoff between optimization and robustness.
• Positive and negative sum games: Whether interactions create or destroy total value.

Learning & Development

• Pattern matching: Expertise comes from recognizing recurring templates.
• Training data: Some lessons can only be learned through examples.
• Social learning: How humans learn from each other.
• Exploration vs objective-seeking: Sometimes wandering beats having a destination.
• Different advice on different days: Context determines what guidance is useful.
• Ecology of practice: Balanced collection of practices for overall human development.

Communication & Information

• Bottlenecked communication: Our ability to express internal experiences is fundamentally limited.
• Controlling inputs: Managing information flow is crucial for clear thinking.
• Polluting the information ecology: Some actors degrade our shared ability to make sense of reality.
• Steelmanning: Address the strongest possible version of an opponent’s argument.
• Definitional disagreement: Many arguments stem from different underlying definitions.

Culture & Ideas

• Everything is a remix: All creation builds on what came before.
• Memetics: Ideas evolve and spread through fitness landscapes.
• Culture as Product: Cultural elements form mutually reinforcing packages.
• Psychotechnologies: Tools that enhance and standardize human cognitive capabilities.
• Hardware, firmware, software: Humans operate on biological hardware, cultural firmware, and psychological software.
• Cargo Culting: Copying surface features while missing the underlying dynamics.

Psychology & Behavior

• Parts work: The psyche is multi-agent and requires internal coordination.
• Resonance: Non-intellectual alignment with ideas or experiences.
• Self vs identity: The difference between core experience and chosen labels.
• Short circuited rewards: When natural feedback loops get hijacked.
• Placebo pump: Harnessing belief and expectation to produce real effects.
• Smells: Intuitive warnings that something may be wrong.

Analysis & Observation

• Pointing at: Extreme positions often indicate overlooked truths.
• Least interesting interesting thing: When attention-grabbing attributes distract from what really matters.
• Expected value thinking: Consider the full distribution of possible outcomes.
• Meta-games: The game beyond the obvious game.
• Descriptive vs Prescriptive: The difference between what is and what should be.

Misc

• Adaptive systems are stronger: [[Systems]] that can change are more resilient.
• Condition setup: Create circumstances that make desired outcomes more likely.
• Proof of work: Demonstrable effort creates credibility.
• Exaptation: Features evolved for one purpose can be repurposed for another
• Lottery of birth: The arbitrary nature of our starting circumstances.
• Optimal amount of X is not zero: Perfect isn’t always zero tolerance.