L32 · Lens
Mental models and inversion
Think in models: first principles, inversion, pre-mortems, and System 1 vs System 2, to correct distorted judgement.
Use: Decisions under pressure, bias, overconfidence.
Boundary: Models are maps; verify them against reality.
Cues
Showing 13 of 13 cues
“The snake that cannot shed its skin perishes. So do the spirits who are prevented from changing their opinions; they cease to be a spirit.”
“Test it this way: you say, “Without using the new word which you have just learned, try to rephrase what you have just learned in your own language.” Without using the word “energy,” tell me what you know now about the dog’s motion.” You cannot. So you learned nothing about science.”
“We take other men’s knowledge and opinions upon trust; which is an idle and superficial learning. We must make them our own. We are just like a man who, needing fire, went to a neighbor’s house to fetch it, and finding a very good one there, sat down to warm himself without remembering to carry any back home. What good does it do us to have our belly full of meat if it is not digested, if it is not transformed into us, if it does not nourish and support us?”
“The first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool.”
“To find the ‘richest’ view [of the world], the one that seems truest to the world as a whole, in the sense that it resonates with our experience in the richest way, the imaginative exercise of inhabiting a number of points of view is required.”
“Without the hard little bits of marble which are called ‘facts’ or ‘data’ one cannot compose a mosaic; what matters, however, are not so much of the individual bits, but the successive patterns into which you arrange them, then break them up and rearrange them.”
The wind-up toy dog and mystic energy
A first-grade science book asks what makes a wind-up toy dog move and answers "energy makes it move"; a mystic formula no better than saying "movability makes it move." The real answer is that the wound-up spring tries to unwind and pushes the gears; taking the toy apart teaches science.
Survivorship bias: the tale of forgotten failures
Survivorship bias skews judgement when we study only visible winners and ignore the silent graveyard of failures who used the exact same traits or strategies.
Mental modelCognitive biases and thinking errorsMental models and decision quality2 more related links
Odysseus and the Sirens
Knowing no man could resist the Sirens, Odysseus had his crew plug their ears with beeswax and bind him to the mast, recognising that compulsion can remove voluntary choice.
Fallacy of misplaced concreteness
Mistaking abstract concepts for concrete reality: abstracting away life, value and purpose to model billiard balls or rockets, then falsely concluding that concrete reality itself is senseless, valueless and purposeless.
Mental modelCognitive biases and thinking errorsMental models and decision quality2 more related links
Anti-dogmatic perspectivism
Treat even your own best theories and philosophies as perspectives and interpretations rather than absolute dogmas, remaining sceptical towards your own conclusions.
Inside-versus-outside comparison error
We compare our intimate knowledge of our own weakness and vacillation with the faultless public image of great figures, and feel presumptuous. The great felt the same doubts but overrode them.
Separate political reality from the ideal
Instead of judging politics by abstract philosophy or politicians' idealistic promises, observe how people actually act in the political realm, separating wishes about how things ought to work from how they do.