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

by Shane Parrish

We calculate velocity by dividing the change in distance by the change in time.

In chemistry, activation energy is the energy that must be delivered to a chemical system in order to initiate a reaction, breaking bonds so that new ones can form.

Figuring out the right amount of activation energy is pertinent to quitting some addictions. It’s not just the moment you decide to quit, it’s everything that had to happen, every crisis you had to face, in order to enact that decision. When considering how much activation energy will be required to finally stop the negative behavior, you likely need enough energy to propel the action through the breaking of your current bonds that facilitate addiction through to building new bonds that are completely different.

Change that doesn’t last is easy. Where a lot of people miss the mark on what is required to produce real change is figuring out the initial investment of energy needed to not only start the reaction, but to finish it.

Sankara wanted to build a country that was self-reliant, and he rejected foreign aid on the opinion that “he who feeds you, controls you.”

In the book How Asia Works, Joe Studwell examines the underpinnings of the success of the economies of Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan, and the failures of Indonesia, Philippines, and Thailand. All these countries have experienced periods of intense growth, but only the first three were able to turn that growth into a sustainable system that could weather downturns and challenges. The key to activation energy is to evaluate how much do you need to see the reaction through to its conclusion. At what point have you gone far enough that you can’t go back?

agriculture output was dampened because landlords made more money renting plots than making investments to increase yields, and families had no incentive to maximize the outputs on the land they didn’t own. In

terms of manufacturing, these countries allowed firms to focus solely on the easier sell to domestic markets, which removed the incentives for knowledge transfer and technological development. And,

Short-term focus on banking profits did not create sustainable growth reactions in these developing countries.

“Different economics [are] appropriate to different stages of development.”17 Instead, recognize that reactions do have an activation energy, and you have a greater chance of success when you consider what is needed to bring about not just the start, but the conclusion of a reaction.

Land reforms and protectionism in developing industry are not long-term policy positions—they are instead short-term components of the activation energy required to bring about sustainable growth.

“There is no significant economy that has developed successfully through policies of free trade and deregulation from the get-go. What has always been required is proactive interventions—the most effective of them in agriculture and manufacturing—that foster early accumulation of capital and technological learning.”

Catalysts accelerate change. While they cannot make a reaction happen that would normally not, they can significantly reduce the time required for change to occur.

Consider the Black Death, which swept the world for several centuries, peaking in the 14th century. The epidemic was tragic, wiping out hundreds of millions of people. Yet it also proved to be a powerful catalyst for social, religious, economic, and cultural change. Though we can’t know if these changes would have happened anyway and it is only the distance of time that enables us to find anything positive in it, it seems that the Black Death was the beginning of many elements of the society we now live in.

Old systems of labor collapsed with so few people left to work. Workers could demand more money because they were less replaceable.

Survivors were considerably better off, and increased social mobility enabled even the poorest people to rise in society and earn more money. New industries bloomed to meet their needs, as those who once struggled to survive now had disposable income. Land became cheap and labor became expensive. With fewer workers, people developed labor-saving technology to make farming more efficient. The overall effect was a restructuring of society to be more equal.

While the Christian church had long dominated society, the Black Death weakened its grip for two reasons: people found it difficult to reconcile the tragedy they saw with religious teachings, and the numbers of priests and religious leaders shrunk.

Those in religious orders died in the same numbers as anyone else. In the cultural gap created, new ideas eme...

Subsequent generations likely lived longer, perhaps because only the strongest survived to pass on their genes.

For many people, unpleasant events, such as getting fired or rejected, prove to be catalysts for tremendous personal growth.

Catalysts accelerate reactions that are capable of occurring anyway. They decrease the amount of energy required to cause change, and in the process make possible reactions that might not have occurred otherwise. People and technologies often act as catalysts, increasing the pace of social change and development.

Not every combination of elements produces a better, more useful alloy, but when you find one that works, the results can allow you to accomplish things previously out of reach. “In the first 4,000 years or so of steel making, the early chemists and metallurgists had no real idea what they were doing, and thus found it very difficult to optimize their processes.

Add to this difficulty the large and very diverse selection of iron ores found in nature—frequently with phosphorus and silicon atoms causing a nuisance—and you may appreciate some of the complexity of the problem. Simply copying a successful procedure might not give a satisfactory product with iron ore from another mine.”1

In our lives, we often have one significant skill but don’t have the other skills necessary to get the most out of it. We need to partner with those who do, forming an alloy that is greater than the sum of its parts. When we’re building something from scratch, we need to consider both the raw materials and how they mix together. A team where everyone has good ideas and nothing else won’t be as strong as a team that also includes someone who has an eye for which ideas are worth pursuing and the skills to make them a reality.

Working together to employ a brilliant psychological assault on the American fort, they managed to take it without any actual fighting. Brock and Tecumseh coordinated their efforts to give the impression there were thousands more Native Americans waiting to fight at Fort Detroit than there were. Brock played on the fear of Native Americans held by the American commander of the fort, and Tecumseh used his men to provide a calculated visual manipulation. When the Americans rode out with the white flag, neither had lost any men.

Aristotle* discussed five components of knowledge. “They are what we today would call science or scientific knowledge (episteme), art or craft knowledge (techne), prudence or practical knowledge (phronesis), intellect or intuitive apprehension (nous) and wisdom (sophia).”6

Thus, over time, the frequency of traits within a population changes as a response to environmental conditions. This is the definition of natural selection.

“Natural selection … is an incredibly simple process requiring just three simple elements—variation between individuals, environmental conditions that favor or select certain variants over others, and a means to reproduce those variants that are better suited to the environment.”

Generalist species are far more resilient than specialists. A rat or a cockroach can survive almost anywhere, a panda less so.

As it evolved, French picked up words from many of the different languages it came into contact with, so that even today it retains words that have origins in Norse, Gaulish, Frankish, Arabic, Spanish, and Italian.

We have to deal with the environment we are in, not the one we wish we were in.

The Red Queen Effect is a compelling principle of evolutionary biology and vivid image to help understand the pressures that all organisms face just in surviving.

The Red Queen Effect was first used in the context of evolutionary biology by Leigh Van Valen in 1973. In his research, he noticed something interesting: that at no point was a species protected from extinction. Evolution is an ongoing process, and all species must continually respond to pressures in their environment or die off. What’s more, constant adaptation is something that everyone is doing, all the time. Hence the use of the Lewis Carroll character from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. The Red Queen tells Alice, “Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place.”16

The Red Queen Effect is often applied to business strategy and human conflict. These two areas bookend the spectrum of the use of this model. Applied to business, it is an argument against complacency. As noted above, the originator of the hypothesis, Leigh Van Valen, observed that longevity does not protect species from extinction. No matter how long a species has survived, a failure to adapt can result in extinction. There is no plateau a species can reach when it gets to say, “Okay, the hard work is done. I can coast now, getting by on what I have.” Because all species are continually adapting, the pressure is constant.

As in an arms race, where one side invests resources to outdo the other, eventually the cost of the resources is immense, but no advantage is gained. An arms race points to the limits of using the Red Queen Effect as a model. In some scenarios, namely those where there is an end to beneficial adaptation, it is better to look at changing parts of the environment in which you are trying to survive instead of trying to keep up in a race that is undermining your overall ability to adapt. Actions that put the existence of an individual or a species in danger are not the goal of adaptation and not supported by the Red Queen Effect.

Natural selection happens in imperceptible increments over vast periods of time. That means that sometimes we can see traces of its path. It’s a misconception that organisms are perfectly formed and adapted to their environments. We can see the traces of natural selection, a slow and imperfect process, in vestigial structures. These are traits that are present in a species or some members of a species, but no longer have any function or value. Vestigial structures may only be present during the embryonic stage or they may be a permanent feature. In the past, they served an important purpose that helped a species survive.

However, similar to velocity, the “speed of adaptation is not the same thing as effective adaptation.…The point is that what matters is not the speed of adaptation, but what problems it helps you solve and what problems arise as a result of an enemy’s adaptations.”18

The tradeoff? The bodies that house these big brains can’t be fully grown inside the womb. So, we are vulnerable for many years after birth.

But beyond our biology, there is no universal definition of success that all humans would agree to. For some it’s about power and recognition, for others it’s about the freedom of choice, and others still would emphasize spiritual enlightenment and peace. However, a fundamental component of success must be that it involves benefit. You gain when you succeed. Anything that compromises your ability to succeed is not justified by this model.

The term “exaptation” was first proposed by Stephen Jay Gould and Elisabeth Vrba in 198220 to make the point that a trait’s current use does not necessarily explain its historical origin. In other words, just because A is used for B by species C does not necessarily mean that species C evolved A for the purpose of doing B. It may very well be the case that B is something that this species learned to do after the adaptation of A.

For example, although today most birds use their feathers to fly, it would be incorrect to say that this means that feathers emerged in these birds specifically for flight. In fact, feathers first emerged in dinosaurs for the purposes of insulation or attracting mates, not flight.

Complacency will kill you. The stronger we are relative to others, the less willing we generally are to change. We see strength as an immediate advantage that we don’t want to compromise. However, it’s not strength that survives, but adaptability.

keystone, that is used at the top of an arch to ensure its structural stability.

Some ecosystems are robust, others more fragile. Some have a high capacity for resistance, which is the tendency of a system to remain close to its equilibrium state. It takes a significant disturbance to affect these ones. Resistance is contrasted with sensitivity, describing those systems for whom very weak disturbances can have a profound effect.

Also measurable is a system’s resilience, which is the speed it recovers after a disturbance. The strength of an ecosystem is thus better considered in more than one dimension. Sensitive systems with very high resiliency can be just as strong as highly resistant systems that have trouble bouncing back.

The Law of the Minimum states that the yield of a crop will always be dictated by the essential nutrient that is available at the lowest level. No matter how abundant the other essential nutrients are, being deficient in one will always limit the crop’s growth. If the level of that nutrient is increased, another will become the limiting factor. One way to envision this is as a bucket with a hole through which water leaks out. The bucket cannot fill to the brim as a result. The deficient nutrient is the hole in the bucket.

It is not necessarily what is available that matters. What is scarce can be paramount too. We can see this in our own lives as well. If you skip on sleep to have more time, tiredness then becomes the limiting factor to your productivity, not time.

Over time, closed systems produce fewer and fewer innovations, because closed systems, by definition, are based on certain increasingly unchallengeable fundamental principles. » Gary Hart12

“The critical factor whenever people work together,” according to Walsh, “is that they expect something of each other. It’s not just that the coach expects a lot of the players—it’s the fact that the players expect a lot of each other.”23

« Generalists can survive and flourish in just about any setting. But specialists tend to be much less comfortable with habitat change.» Peter Ungar