Super Thinking: The Big Book of Mental Models

by Gabriel Weinberg

When de-risking, you want to test assumptions quickly and easily.

Take a vacation plan. Assumptions could be around cost (“I can afford this vacation”), satisfaction (“I will enjoy this vacation”), coordination (“my relatives can join me on this vacation”), etc. Here, de-risking is as easy as doing a few minutes of online research, reading reviews, and sending an email to your relatives.

De-risking acknowledges that every belief is founded on base assumptions and as a result they may be untrue. As such, each assumptions needs to be checked (checks and balances: mental model) with a test to prove the assumption try or false.

If your assumptions turn out to be wrong, you’re going to have to throw out all that work, rendering it ultimately a waste of time.

It’s as if you booked an entire vacation assuming your family could join you, only to finally ask them and they say they can’t come. Then you have to go back and change everything, but all this work could have been avoided by a simple communication up front.

another mental model to help you test your assumptions, called minimum viable product, or MVP...

are developing with just enough features, the minimum amount, to be feasibly, or viab...

The MVP keeps you from working by yourself for too long. LinkedIn cofounder Reid ...

“If you’re not embarrassed by the first version of your product, you’...

No matter the context, what they’re all saying is that your first plan is probably wrong. While it is the best starting point you have right now, you must revise it often based on the real-world feedback you receive. And we recommend doing as little work as possible before getting that real-world feedback.

Your first draft is going to suck

As with de-risking, you can extend the MVP model to fit many other contexts: minimum viable organization, minimum viable communication, minimum viable strategy, minimum viable experiment. Since we have so many mental models to get to, we’re trying to do minimum viable explanations!

The MVP forces you to evaluate your assumptions quickly. One way you can be wrong with

your assumptions is by coming up with too many or too complicated assumptions up front when there are clearly simpler sets you can start with.

Ockham’s razor helps here. It advises that the simplest explanation is most likely to be true. When you encounter competing explanations that plausibly explain a set of data equally well, you probably...

This model is a razor because it “shaves off” unneces...

“Everything should be made as simple as it can be, but not simpler!”

In medicine, it’s known by this saying: “When you hear hoofbeats, think of horses, not zebras.”

A practical tactic is to look at your explanation of a situation, break it down into its constituent assumptions, and for each one, ask yourself: Does this assumption really need to be here? What evidence do...

If instead people reflected on whom they’ve dated in the past in terms of what underlying characteristics drove their past relationships to fail, a much simpler set of dating criteria would probably emerge.

Inverse thinking and ocham's razor: Instead of thinking about the things that they do want; daters can also think about the things that they want to avoid and make a simple quantifiable list of 3-5 things

Ockham’s razor is not a “law” in that it is always true; it just offers guidance.

Occhams razor is not always true but it's a good starting point because the complex evolves out of the simple.

If you don’t simplify your assumptions, you can fall into a couple of traps, described in our next mental models. First, most people are, unfortunately, hardwired to latch onto unnecessary assumptions, a predilection called the conjunction fallacy,

In their study, most people answered that number 2 is more probable, but that’s impossible unless all bank tellers are also active in the feminist movement. The fallacy arises because the probability of two events in conjunction is always less than or equal to the probability of either one of the events occurring alone, a concept illustrated in the Venn diagram on the next page.

Study the conjunction fallacy in depth

You not only have a natural tendency to think something specific is more probable than

something general, but you also have a similarly fallacious tendency to explain data u...

The mental model for this second fallacy is overfitting, a conc...

Overfitting is a concept from statistics that describes the tendency to explain data with to many assumptions.

Overfitting occurs when you use an overly complicated explanation when a simpler one will do. It’s what happens when you don’t heed Ockham’s razor, when you get sucked into the conjunction fallacy or make a similar unforced error.

Do I really need the curvy line to explain the data, or would a simple straight line explain just as much?

pithy

mne...

KISS: Keep It Simple, Stupid! When craft...

to a problem, whether making a decision or explaining data, you want to start with the simplest set of assumptions you can think of a...

appears different in different frames of reference.

If you’re trying to be as objective as possible when making a decision or solving a problem, you always want to account for your frame of reference. You will of course be influenced by your perspective, but you don’t want to be unknowingly influenced. And if you think you may not have the full understanding of a situation, then you must actively try to get it by looking from a variety of different frames of reference.

Increase frame of reference AND widen perspective

A frame-of-reference mental trap (or useful trick, depending on your perspective) is framing. Framing refers to the way you present a situation or explanation. When you present an important issue to your coworker or family member, you try to frame it in a way that might help them best understand your perspective, setting the stage for a beneficial conversation.

You also need to be aware that family members and coworkers are constantly framing issues for you as well, and your perception of their ideas can vary widely based on how they are framed.

When someone presents a new idea or decision to you, take a step back and consider other ways in which it could be framed.

If a colleague tells you they are leaving for another job to seek a better opport...

In a study by Ullrich Ecker and others, “The Effects of Subtle Misinformation in News Headlines,” presented in the December 2014 issue of the Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied,

The practical implications of this research are clear: News consumers

must be [made] aware that editors can strategically use headlines to effectively sway public opinion and influence individuals’ behavior.

Framing, agenda setting, and spinning

A related trap/trick is nudging.

Aldert Vrij presents a compelling example in his book Detecti...

Dan Ariely, behavioral economist

They’re reduced from the so-called manufacturer’s suggested retail price (MSRP), which is usually very high.

Being aware of the MSRP anchors you so that you feel you are getting a good deal at 40 percent off. Often, that reduction just brings the price to a reasonable level.

Trump: The Art of the Deal:

availability bias, which occurs when a bias, or distortion, creeps into your objective view of reality thanks to information recently made available to you.

pundits

The polling company Gallup annually asks Americans about their perception of changing violent crime rates and found in 2014 that “federal crime statistics have not been highly relevant to the public’s crime perceptions in recent years.”

“Judged Frequency of Lethal Events,” from the Journal of Experimental Psychology,

Sarah Lichtenstein and others asked people about forty-one leading causes of death. They found that people often overstate the risk of sensationally over-reported causes of death, like tornados, by fifty times and understate the risk of common causes of death, like stroke, by one hundred times.