
Mental Models: The Best Way to Make Intelligent Decisions - MurizS
https://fs.blog/mental-models/?
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Barrin92
mental models are terrible. This entire farnam street /rationalist culture is
terrible, fallacy screaming falls into the same category.

The reason why it's terrible is because mental models are like a sort of
jumbled set of tools, copied over from somewhere else. Deep and genuine
knowledge is tacit, integrated, incorporates experience and is organic. It's
acquired through training and expertise and often can't be verbalised or
formalised.

Relying on mental models is a sort of crutch. Maybe a good comparison is chess
playing. If you're a new chess player you learn that pieces are worth X
points, and that such and such squares are important, and that's basically
like these sorts of models. Really good chess players don't consciously think
like that, at least not in a sort of pronounced way. They've incorporated
knowledge and play by intuition. They can make 'good moves' in a second or
two.

I don't know why these 'fallacies' and 'mental model' things have taken off so
much within certain circles, I feel like it's because people do nothing else
other than reading these blogs. Real expertise or knowledge isn't gained by
sitting around and 'thinking through stuff', it's by coming into interaction
with the real world and immersing yourself in what you want to get better at.

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olipi
I agree with what you said, but I don't think it invalidates the usefulness of
"mental model" thinking. I like that you used the word "tacit," because I
think that's exactly what somebody like Charlie Munger would point out: when
dealing with complex issues, people often rely on their tacit knowledge and,
because of their own limitations and biases, miss some of the most fundamental
and obvious aspects of their problem. An example he uses is the introduction
of New Coke: Munger describes a number of extremely basic biological and
psychological concepts that could have predicted the failure of New Coke,
things that are part of every 100-level course in those subjects, and yet the
executives at Coke still managed to completely fail to integrate that
knowledge into their decision-making. I'm not all on the hype train, but I do
think the idea of applying a broad set of concepts to complex problems can be
really, really useful, and sometimes will produce better results than relying
on your tacit knowledge. There are of course problems where this is not true,
and knowing the difference is important. Mental model thinking will probably
not generate the next big breakthrough in some highly technical field like
math or physics, for example. But that doesn't mean it has no value.

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slx26
Yeah, I think your comment adds some interesting ideas.

Following the original chess comparisons, we could also say that new players
will learn more and faster when given some models of what are good and bad
moves, than if they need to learn from scratch with nothing else. Eventually
they will outgrow that and their knowledge will exceed what can fit into a
"mental model", but models are not useless. But still with chess, there's also
the so called Kotov syndrome, which is "a situation when a player thinks very
hard for a long time in a complicated position but does not find a clear path,
then, running low on time, quickly makes a poor move, often a blunder".
Overthinking, getting too deep into a certain path, can also be a problem.
Intelligent people sometimes make obvious mistakes due to getting lost on deep
thoughts. And this is a problem related to deep knowledge, not just models.
Nothing is foolproof.

What I think is productive here is to distinguish between different types of
models: if a model can help you acknowledge certain problems or patterns, that
can be pretty useful; but if it tries to be the all-encompassing explanation
to something, then it's probably wrong and might lead you the wrong way more
often than not, constraining your vision instead of expanding it. You need
experience to make good decisions, not just be given a model, but experience
is also not enough or not always there, and models can help fill some of those
gaps too.

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madballster
So why are "mental models" the best way to make intelligent decisions? What
other ways to make intelligent decisions exist? The blog post failed to
explain that, it largely appears to be marketing material.

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atoav
I think most people use mental models to geht to decisions. It is just that
these mental models are usually _implicit_ — so if you would ask somebody what
their mental model behind a specific decision was they might not be able to
tell you.

These mental models are _explicit_ , this is good because it moves a process
that was subconscious into the light of day.

And why is this good? Because we all encounter situations in which our
existing ways of thinking and deciding will fail. Isn't it good to then be
able to shape the direction of your own thoughts in such a situation? Of
course this takes a little practise: especially in stress situations most
people wouldn't think about the way they are thinking even for a moment,
because it is maybe a bit too meta and needs to be thought on purpose.

In my experience this is the best thing you can do in stress situations
(unless it is a matter of life and death) is to give yourself a moment,
observe yourself from the outside and actively decide which way you are going
to think about the solution.

So mental models can be a way to break up your own thinking and avoid doing
something out of reflex or because you always do it that way. Of course
blindly following mental models and applying them to everything can also be a
bad thing, like every tool could if you just use it wrong enough.

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Retric
The overhead of explicit mental models means their terrible for any complex
decision making process. Try an apply them to an extremely well studied
problem like say chess and you still get stomped by people with even basic
skills. Less obviously all real world problems you need to actually consider
end up being complex with a huge number of subtle interactions.

What’s actually useful 99.9% of the time is either external models that can
run on computers, or implicit models developed by synthesis of knowledge and
practice.

PS: Mental models can be useful in extremely stressful situations where there
is no need to act quickly or come up with complex solutions. There is a
hurricane forecasted to hit this area in 5 days doesn’t need a great solution
just a set of reasonable choices.

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jvanderbot
It is true that mental models are a natural way to think about the world. I
think it's so natural that it doesn't need to be called out. It's better to
focus on honing your models than it is to look at the meta-process surrounding
the existence of models, I think.

I mean, for example, why worry about filling a perceived gap in your mental
models (e.g., ponder the existence of the Overton Window as a model of group
decision making and political discourse), when just learning about the Overton
Window (without all this mental model meta-tagging) is already a useful thing
to think about when making decisions.

I'm glad that the "General thinking concepts" are not being cast as "mental
models", that would be a meta-classification error. (Aphorisms != Models the
same way as Information!=Data or Knowledge!=wisdom).

But seriously, this is just a book marketing page that keeps getting re-
written and re-posted over and over.

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haltingproblem
I posted this comment in an earlier thread on Mental Models but here it goes
again.

Remember when someone is pushing something ask yourself - what is their
agenda? Farnam Street's Shane Parrish is the newsletter and subscription
business, just like CNBC is in the financial infotainment business not in the
investment or wealth creation business. They want you think of them as the
authority by peddling ideas from an place of authority without actually
providing a track record of success. CNBC's Jim Cramer's stock recommendations
on evaluation had a worse than S&P record and subsequently pulled from his
site.

Mental model are quite interesting to read but applying them is another
matter. It like asking Tiger Woods for golf lessons. I have been reading
mental models for a couple decades now. I decided to pick one model and focus
on applying it - invert always invert. This one simple rule has been really
hard to apply. One, it is really really hard to remember to apply in the heat
of decision making. Two, you cannot just _apply_ it. That requires practice
_with_ an expert practitioner like an apprenticeship (guilds), extended
internship (law/finance) or residency (medicine). You cannot just pick it up
by reading a damn article or book.

Let me give an analogy of trying to reason about physical properties from
first principles which is another "mental model". This is another popular
exhortation - think from first principles just like Feynman or Fermi.
Apparently, Fermi figured out the yield from the first test nuclear blast by
tossing paper confetti over his head and calculating the yield from the
scatter from the blast wave. I can think from first principles in one
extremely narrow field where I happen to have half a decade of education and
20 years of experience. To reason from first principles like Fermi or Feynman
in a broad domain like physics requires a world class mind, a world class
education and a world of experience. Seriously, WTF.

Most mental model writing is akin to consuming youtube fitness porn. It looks
easy to do, you look cool doing it and the end results are just spectacular.
However, like Arnold or David Goggins it requires an inhuman dedication,
purpose, ability to withstand pain, bounce back from trauma and just keep
sacrificing attitude for a couple of decades with a healthy dose of failure.
Most of the time the only person benefiting is the video creator from the ad-
roll.

I appreciate the posts but I now believe these mental models are incredibly
hard to do and like most of the self-improvement/growth hacking genre is just
good for entertainment and commerce 99.99% of the time.

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MichaelZuo
Definitely useful in my experience. Mental models provide a flexible framework
for so many types of thinking that it becomes an extension of your mind that
sublimates into the background.

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zaphirplane
What’s an example, cause they seem awesome on paper but I wonder if they
change the decision in real life because of the emotional or I like this
aspect

~~~
MichaelZuo
A clear example would be the mental model of an animal cell’s functions. In
reality it’s such a sophisticated construct that no one could actually
understand everything about it in entirety, there has to be a reduction, an
abstraction so to speak, somewhere along the way. And voila, turns out mental
models are the best way of doing this.

The best areas for applying this in general are the areas simply too complex
without reduction.

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jlj
This book talks about in mental models in depth, "Deep Survival" by Lawrence
Gonzales [1]. Mental models can contribute to death in survival situations
because they are biased by past experience. Being adaptable and practicing
resilience is a much better survival strategy. A dark sense of humor helps
too.

It's a really great read on how the brain works. It helped me understand some
of my own fears about the COVID pandemic. It also helps me understand (but not
agree with) why some people are so resistant to wearing masks when it might
keep their loved ones alive.

The book gives examples of mountaineering accidents. The mental model says
that the group is roped in together. Symbolically, everyone is a team, in it
together. But guess how much physical force is generated by gravity when 150+
pounds of person and gear when a fall reached the end of a 50ft rope? More
than what physical strength and crampons can support. That one mental model
comes up a lot in mountaineering accident reports.

[1]
[https://smile.amazon.com/dp/0393326152](https://smile.amazon.com/dp/0393326152)

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tilt_error
These are not what I would call mental models. These are strategies (in
various forms) and, as such, relatively vague strategies for assembling mental
models.

Mental models live on a continuum ranging from directly incorrect to accurate.
You always have them, mostly the incorrect ones early on in your career. With
wisdom comes the accurate mental models and I would kill (not literally of
course) for obtaining the good ones :)

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tjbiddle
I very much enjoy mental models. A close friend and myself have a weekly
mastermind where we go over what's happening for us on both a personal and
professional level. It keeps us both in check and allows us to come to
conclusions more effectively.

For the past couple months we've introduced going over a mental model every
week as well. We'll summarize it in our own words, discuss examples of how we
can use it - or when it makes sense to avoid it. They're not end-all-be-all,
but they're a great thing to use as a starting point.

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hirundo
Fallacies are mental models too.

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Infiltrator
I'd like to take a moment to thank the author of this blog post for some of
the most engaging content I've read in a long time. Thank you!

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mihirchronicles
I am working on wisecharlie.com and mental models are really valuable.

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auggierose
If mental models are so great, why is most software refusing to give us one
for how it works?

