The Great Mental Models: General Thinking Concepts

by Shane Parrish

most of your actions are based on incomplete knowledge and you really don’t know what it is all about, or what the purpose of the world is, or know a great deal of other things. It is possible to live and not know. »

Our failures to update from interacting with reality spring primarily from three things: not having the right perspective or vantage point, ego-induced denial, and distance from the consequences of our decisions.

It’s easier to fool ourselves that we’re right at a high level than at the micro level, because at the micro level we see and feel the immediate consequences.

We also tend to undervalue the elementary ideas and overvalue the complicated ones.

In the real world you will either understand and adapt to find success or you will fail

An engineer will often think in terms of systems by default. A psychologist will think in terms of incentives. A business person might think in terms of opportunity cost and risk-reward. Through their disciplines, each of these people sees part of the situation, the part of the world that makes sense to them. None of them, however, see the entire situation unless they are thinking in a multidisciplinary way.

Maps describe a territory in a useful way, but with a specific purpose. They cannot be everything to everyone.

And, because we often consume these abstractions as gospel, without having done the hard mental work ourselves, it’s tricky to see when the map no longer agrees with the territory. We inadvertently forget that the map is not reality.

As territories change, our tools to navigate them must be flexible to handle a wide variety of situations or adapt to the changing times. If the value of a map or model is related to its ability to predict or explain, then it needs to represent reality. If reality has changed the map must change.

Some of the biggest map/territory problems are the risks of the territory that are not shown on the map.

What is common to many is taken least care of, for all men have greater regard for what is their own than for what they possess in common with others.

In order to use a map or model as accurately as possible, we should take three important considerations into account: Reality is the ultimate update. Consider the cartographer. Maps can influence territories.

I’m no genius. I’m smart in spots—but I stay around those spots.

When ego and not competence drives what we undertake, we have blind spots. If you know what you understand, you know where you have an edge over others. When you are honest about where your knowledge is lacking you know where you are vulnerable and where you can improve.

Within our circles of competence, we know exactly what we don’t know. We are able to make decisions quickly and relatively accurately. We possess detailed knowledge of additional information we might need to make a decision with full understanding, or even what information is unobtainable. We know what is knowable and what is unknowable and can distinguish between the two.

Learning comes when experience meets reflection.

We don’t keep the right records, because we don’t really want to know what we’re good and bad at. Ego is a powerful enemy when it comes to better understanding reality.

reasoning from first principles, it’s a tool to help clarify complicated problems by separating the underlying ideas or facts from any assumptions based on them.

If you know the first principles of something, you can build the rest of your knowledge around them to produce something new.

Clarifying your thinking and explaining the origins of your ideas. (Why do I think this? What exactly do I think?) Challenging assumptions. (How do I know this is true? What if I thought the opposite?) Looking for evidence. (How can I back this up? What are the sources?) Considering alternative perspectives. (What might others think? How do I know I am correct?) Examining consequences and implications. (What if I am wrong? What are the consequences if I am?) Questioning the original questions. (Why did I think that? Was I correct? What conclusions can I draw from the reasoning process?)

areas in which thought experiments are tremendously useful. Imagining physical impossibilities Re-imagining history Intuiting the non-intuitive

the events that have happened in history are but one realization of the historical process—one possible outcome among a large variety of possible outcomes. They’re like a deck of cards that has been dealt out only one time. All the things that didn’t happen, but could have if some little thing went another way, are invisible to us.

What kind of policies would you design or support if you didn’t know what your role in the company was? Or even anything about who you were?

The set of conditions necessary to become successful is a part of the set that is sufficient to become successful. But the sufficient set itself is far larger than the necessary set.

Second-order thinking is thinking farther ahead and thinking holistically. It requires us to not only consider our actions and their immediate consequences, but the subsequent effects of those actions as well.

two areas where second-order thinking can be used to great benefit: Prioritizing long-term interests over immediate gains Constructing effective arguments

The theory of probability is the only mathematical tool available to help map the unknown and the uncontrollable.

improve your chances of catching the ball: Bayesian thinking Fat-tailed curves Asymmetries

First, never take a risk that will do you in completely. (Never get taken out of the game completely.) Second, develop the personal resilience to learn from your failures and start again. With these two rules, you can only fail temporarily.

We notice two things happening at the same time (correlation) and mistakenly conclude that one causes the other (causation).

a way to tell between a real improvement and something that would have happened anyway. That is the introduction of the so-called control group, which is expected to improve by regression alone.

two approaches to applying inversion in your life. Start by assuming that what you’re trying to prove is either true or false, then show what else would have to be true. Instead of aiming directly for your goal, think deeply about what you want to avoid and then see what options are left over.

it can be just as powerful to remove obstacles to change.

Anybody can make the simple complicated. Creativity is making the complicated simple.

Occam’s Razor is a great tool for avoiding unnecessary complexity by helping you identify and commit to the simplest explanation possible.

An explanation can be simplified only to the extent that it can still provide an accurate understanding.

Hanlon’s Razor states that we should not attribute to malice that which is more easily explained by stupidity. In a complex world, using this model helps us avoid paranoia and ideology.

Always assuming malice puts you at the center of everyone else’s world. This is an incredibly self-centered approach to life. In reality, for every act of malice, there is almost certainly far more ignorance, stupidity, and laziness.