The Great Mental Models Volume 3: Systems and Mathematics

by Rhiannon Beaubien

them a useful mental model. Think of “feedback” as the information communicated in response to an action.

A critical requirement is learning how to filter feedback. Not all of it is useful. The more quickly you learn to identify good feedback and accept and incorporate it, the more progress you will make toward what you want to achieve.

In our lives, problems arise when the feedback for our actions is delayed or indirect, as is often the case.

different sort of invisible force that guides us: how the approval and disapproval of others, real or imagined, influences our behavior.

In economics, production processes change as they scale. The more of something that is produced, the more the marginal cost of each additional unit tends to shrink.

When we look at systems on the macro scale, they sometimes exhibit capabilities that aren’t present on the micro scale. This is known as emergence: when systems as a whole function in ways we can’t predict by looking at their parts.

The main body of Vikings were given lands in the Seine basin in exchange for protecting Paris. They settled into northern France and within a century were speaking a dialect of French and became known as the Normans. »

Why do complex societies, like the Roman Empire, collapse? One theory, advanced by Joseph A. Tainter in The Collapse of Complex Societies, is that it comes down to diminishing returns. As societies grow and develop, they become more complex and require more and more “energy flow” to stay intact.

One major fallacy casinos profit from is the mistaken belief that what happened in the last round affects what happens in the next one. Assuming no tampering, any particular outcome of a roll of the dice or the spin of a roulette wheel is equally likely each time. The past does not influence it.

In 1913, the roulette wheel in a Monte Carlo casino landed on black 26 times in a row. Gamblers lost millions when they kept betting large sums of money on it being red next.