The Great Mental Models, Volume 2: Physics, Chemistry and Biology

by Shane Parrish

and conceptual perspectives, such as that people have different feelings or beliefs that in turn influence their perspectives.

I understood this on some level but not clearly.

we don’t gain perspective only with our eyes, but through the lens of our experiences, biases, desires, and more.

Quotable

In our lives, we often have one significant skill but don’t have the other skills necessary to get the most out of it.

Reminds me of a saying I repeated to my children. Everyone has a role to play; no one can play them all.

Adaptations are further constrained by the fact that an organism must be viable at all stages of the adaptation process. What this means on the human life timescale is that if you are compromising your physical health or your sanity, you are not adapting. You are instead weakening your ability to successfully respond to changes in your environment.

Worth reminding myself once in a while.

exaptation

I wonder if ‘upcycling’ means, more or less, the same thing.

Steven Johnson

Read preview chapters of his books.

“functional fixedness,”

Want to remember this. Whenever I play with one of grandson’s construction toy, I take away the instructions and ask him to use his imagination instead .

Complacency will kill you.

Quote to remember.

But we often suffer from intervention bias, the desire to always do something instead of leaving things alone, when it comes to ecosystems. We forget that they’ve evolved to manage quite well if we let them get on with it.

This applies to gardening as well.

Often, the harder we try to control ecosystems, the harder they fight back.3

Worth quoting

Over time, closed systems produce fewer and fewer innovations, because closed systems, by definition, are based on certain increasingly unchallengeable fundamental principles.

Could this also apply to countries?

1493,

Great book

« The diversity of species present seems to impart long-term survival to an ecosystem.» Rafe Sagarin20

Checking out his book.

In an ecosystem, all species have a role to play.

Quotable

“everyone has a role, and every role is essential.”

Good enough for a Mom quote.

Nothing exists in isolation. Everything is connected.

Worth remembering

As humans, we’re always on hair trigger to hoard at the slightest sign of scarcity, even if doing so ends up worsening that scarcity.

Like toilet paper?

“Physicians, like scientists, want to believe their integrity cannot be compromised. Yet every time physicians accept a few dollars or other incentives for performing certain tests and procedures, for channeling some of their patients into clinical trials, or for prescribing a new, expensive drug that is not better or safer than an older one, they are balancing their patients’ welfare against their own concerns.”17

Why I am weary of doctors who writes a lot prescription drugs.

In Thinking Fast and Slow,

Well worth reading.

You must always be willing to adjust for new information, but be knowledgeable enough to be selective about what you let in.

Wisdom