
An Astronaut’s Guide to Mental Models - yarapavan
https://fs.blog/2020/02/mental-models-in-space/
======
andrewflnr
I'm conflicted about the whole "Mental Model" thing that has sprung up in the
last couple years. In principle, naming and sharing useful patterns of thought
is useful. In practice, every time I see them like this they make my skin
crawl. Mental models are supposed to just be models, but, like, in your mind.
People are building a pyramid on a mole hill instead of just noticing the
hill...

Ah, just realized the applicable Mental Model according to TFA. They're
blurring the distinction between the map (mental models) and territory (actual
thinking).

Ed: first paragraph was largely superfluous.

Ed2: "building a pyramid on a mole hill" describes so many things. Did I just
invent a Mental Model? I think I did.

~~~
themodelplumber
It'd be nice if we could move the conversation about Mental Models into "how
to evaluate such a model for quality" as soon as possible.

Otherwise the novelty of the most recent proliferation of the term is pushing
critics to decide "good or bad" regarding _mental models in general_, which
is, to be frank, pretty dumb. Certainly such a dichotomy is much worse by
itself than a broad field in which some poor models, applied poorly, are mixed
in with a lot of really great examples.

And I guess this doesn't even get into the value proposition of a task like
cataloging mental models and/or quantifying them via simple lists...mental
models are a core aspect of human psychology and there's really an impressive
amount of depth to the topic. Ramming a bunch of them together for quantity
seems like a good way to make readers feel either over-confident or
overwhelmed.

~~~
yellow_lead
Questions answered from different mental models will get you different
answers. Just as important as having these different "mental models" or
"perspectives" (if you will) is discerning which is correct. AKA thinking for
yourself. In my mind, a mental model is only useful for generating ideas from
which you can gain another insight. No model has the right answer for every
question.

~~~
lowdose
Would be nice though to map which models are most relevant for specific
questions.

~~~
themodelplumber
Validity, accuracy, reliability...science has helped us go a long way toward
sorting it out.

We've come so far in our measurement that there has begun a stringent internal
critique of our time-tested models for measurement of those criteria.

------
_jal
The astronaut angle is just stupid clickbait.

If you want to learn habits from people who make on-the-fly life-or-death
decisions, there are much bigger pools of people who do that, who have
experience much more relevant to what ever it is you're doing, than people who
managed to survive in a space-can[1].

More applicably, the most common life-or-death decision made by people reading
this is how much attention they pay while driving. Modeling that in a way that
makes you better at it would likely provide substantially more, er, lack of
bang for your buck than worrying how Armstrong made particular choices.

[1] I don't mean to belittle astronauts - they're clearly exceptional in their
own way. I'm questioning how relevant their unique experience is to others'
lives, and what other relevant experience they far have that bigger pools of
other people don't.

~~~
zeroxfe
> The astronaut angle is just stupid clickbait.

It's not an "angle" and it's definitely not clickbait -- they're excerpts from
a book written by an astronaut.

> the most common life-or-death decision made by people reading this is how
> much attention they pay while driving.

Yes, sure, they should pay attention while driving, but why can't they also
learn lessons from astronauts?

> managed to survive in a space-can[1] > [1] I don't mean to belittle
> astronauts

Sorry, it feels like you are. There's a lot of interesting and useful lessons
in the article and the book, and you're kinda dismissing it just because it's
from an astronaut.

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harry8
I saw a BBC documentary where they interviewed every astronaut who had walked
on the moon who would speak to them about life. Most were total and utter
cranks! Strangest thing I've ever seen. You can understand why once you've
seen it. Peaking at a young age, the incredible stress of being a test pilot
and watching so many colleagues die through no fault of their own. The
adulation for surviving, which really wasn't up to you. Etc. I have huge
sympathy for all the Astronuats - not that they'd want it and good for them.

But I'm not taking an astronauts advice on literally anything because they are
or were an astronaut. Doing that ends up in the realms of spoon bending. If an
astronaut has an idea it stands or falls on the merit of the idea. If you want
a heuristic, most astronaut's ideas aren't worth your time. It's a sad
conclusion to come to and I'm sure it's unpopular because we love having
glamorous heroes but there it is.

~~~
ken
I agree with your criticism of hero worship, and the personal issues with the
early pilots / astronauts, but modern space flight is nothing like that.

It's still dangerous, but our success rate with rockets is far, far better
than it was in the 1960's. Complex systems, as Hadfield notes, succeed because
of diligence and cooperation, not luck and cowboyism. Most astronauts in the
21st century don't have 1-in-4 of their colleagues killed on the job.

~~~
harry8
Astronauts are still the monkeys in a can. The success or failure now as it
always was is in the engineering team, not the warm body who (to paraphrase
Carl Sagan) is /still/ really only present for PR purposes rather than to
optimise the advancement of technology and science.

Head of space flight engineering or whatever at NASA - yeah? Heuristic would
be listen to them, they might know something. Monkey in the can on top of the
fire-cracker? If they do know something it's more coincidence with their
usefulness in PR than anything else. Sad but true. If NASA abandoned human
flight tomorrow they'd probably get a lot more bang for buck - other than in
PR because we love us a person to fuel our imagination and I am no different
there. How flippin' cool is it ride the fireball into space?!?

~~~
darkmighty
You are wildly uninformed when it comes to astronaut roles. Could the ISS be
automated? Perhaps, but at astronomical costs. And most tasks would still
require remote operation. Also many experiments are done precisely on humans
themselves.

In general modern astronauts have many roles -- flight managers, technicians
(doing and evaluating repairs), scientists, experimental subjects, and finally
yes communicators to an extent (frankly great to inspire people). Obvious
Hadfield isn't a perfect human being and I'm sure he doesn't like adulation,
but his vast set of skills, including communication effectiveness is quite
impressive (and music ability -- check out his space video clip!). I assure
you he's no crank (perhaps you're biased by early space program people that
were test pilots). I recommend checking out his and other ISS youtube videos
to get an idea:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Hj3GnPRsJ4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Hj3GnPRsJ4)

~~~
harry8
Compare the costs of automation development vs the cost of life support
systems development, launch and maitenance and it's not even close.

Yeah I know it sucks when someone poo-poos on your (and my) heroes. I know.
"For a successful technology... " etc. Feynman wasn't perfect either.
Astronauts continue to be selected according to an ideal of how they will come
accross to the public, from Alan Shephard on. And there was something very
impressive about all of them that played well in the media. It took 30 years
to find out so many of them are also pretty weird and not people you'd take
scientific advice from.

Experiments on humans in space are mostly interesting in research for space
life-support. You do different, arguably vastly more bang for buck experiments
if you're not using humans to do them.

The space race was literally cold war propaganda (and wonderful, beautiful
stuff at that - vastly better than most propaganda). NASA continues to put PR
front and centre. You can disagree, that's fine, decide to what extent the PR
is influencing you and if you're sure it's minimal I can't ask for much more,
right?

The ideal would be if NASA had basic science front and centre rather than the
incredible waste frittering away vast wealth on the pretence of children's
astronaut dreams. And I want a flying car too but reality should win out.

~~~
darkmighty
Oh here we go -- this is a vast subject (and I understand some of your
questioning), I wish I had time for a more thorough analysis, but here are
some key points.

\- Humans are actually fantastic space exploration hardware.

We already have robotic vehicles exploring other planets. They are not
autonomous, and have glorified Arduinos in them. Not for lack of money or
development, but because it is extremely difficult to do autonomous
exploration, and the hardware is essentially currently impossible because
there's nothing good enough, and not even remotely close to good enough that
can survive radiation and space environment. Exploration currently is
extremely slow, done through remote control, with up to 24 minute delays
(Mars).

\- Humans can self-reproduce with low-tech inputs

We are perhaps from >50 to >>100s years away from machine compact self-
reproduction, then imagine self-reproduction with human-like intelligence.
Only humans can make colonies for the near future.

\- AGI (or just good enough scientist AI, explorer AI, etc) is uncertainly
distant

It could be 20, or it could be 100 years or more away (if our civilization
even survives that long before wars/climate change/etc), economically viable
AGI is uncertain, economically viable compact radiation-resistant AGI is
vastly uncertain.

\- It is worthwhile to bet on long term space exploration and habitation

This is the most difficult case. I think it's worthwhile to devote resources
on long term space exploration and habitation. In particular research since it
is so expensive right now and we still experiencing rapid technological
change. We want to eventually live on other planets (and even other star
systems). The other aspects are complementary, like inspiring people to work
in engineering and science; the main thing is giving hope for the future, even
if it's a future you won't live.

Most of the research anyways finds applications in terrestrial systems
(remember that we still do pure Mathematics, whose research value tends to
crop decades later or more).

\---

It is expensive, yes (ISS costs about $3 billion per year for NASA
apparently), but overall I think it's a tiny investment for great returns (at
varying levels of risk).

\---

Finally, to expand on hope: hope is great things many things, but one of them
is simply the way people act on expectations of the future. If they don't
expect to live long, or a long term future worth living for other generations,
you expect we will act more selfishly and greedily, a self-fulfilling
prophetical aspect. Thus it's extremely important not to neglect
sustainability and somewhat distant dreams.

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GaryNumanVevo
I've just discovered "Mental Models". It's really weird putting a name to the
mechanisms I've used to explain and reason for as long as I can remember.

~~~
newprint
Smell BS ? It is a new Buzz word. Just wait, it will pass.

~~~
oh_sigh
The term was coined in the 1940s so it is not likely a buzz word.

~~~
andrewflnr
The recent usage of "mental model" is. The fact that the term had a more
useful meaning before makes its buzzwordification all the more irritating.
Before a mental model was just a way you thought of something. Now they're
Named Things to be shoehorned all over the place. Imagine if "design pattern"
had been a casually but widely used term before _Design Patterns_ came out
(maybe it was, I wasn't around then).

~~~
james_s_tayler
So... What would you call them instead?

~~~
andrewflnr
I would probably try to find a more specific term for the specific idea I'm
talking about rather than try to use one term for all of them. That said,
"heuristic" is a good term for a lot of them. "Framework" is another one that
came up in this thread.

~~~
james_s_tayler
The entire reason to call them "Mental Models" is to aid in their
communication and discovery.

There are many hueristics that are not mental models. There are many things
that are frameworks that are not mental models.

Labelling something a "mental model" as used in this context serves the
purpose to communicate "here is an abstraction with unusually good power-to-
weight ratio that you can leverage to aide your thinking/reasoning about
situations that meet a given set of criteria".

It's actually a very specific thing.

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dvt
The "mental models" stuff just seems like gobbledygook. Hadfield is giving
regular kind of advice you read everywhere from Sun Tzu to John Wooden:

    
    
        - Don't be selfish
        - Learn from your mistakes
        - Expect the unexpected
        - Etc.
    

Doesn't really seem like Earth-shattering stuff.

~~~
mathgladiator
It's not so much earth shattering stuff so much as confirmation. These are not
easy lessons for many people due to various psychological factors and history.
It helps push people in the right direction when the message is given by
someone that they respect.

An interesting part of leadership can be repetition, so this feels reasonable.

~~~
baddox
Is this confirmation useful? Or stated another way, would you feel less
confident about aphorisms like "don't be selfish" and "learn from your
mistakes" if a famous astronaut said they were bad ideas?

~~~
mathgladiator
It all depends on the person, who they look up to, their history, their
biases. A selfish person that values space travel may ignore all other sources
of information, but the astronaut saying it may cause a moment of reflection.

Now, is this ideal? No, we are a strange-strange species.

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DEADBEEFC0FFEE
I did some work with a Design Anthropologist a while ago, in that field a
Mental Model was used to describe how particular people think, and that was
used to help solve their problems. That seems like a good use of the term.

The way the term is used in the article, I would rather call a thinking style,
or simply a way to think.

I think there is value in them, but often they are pretty bloody obvious and
not in anyway new.

Circle of Competence is just playing to your strengths.

Second Order Thinking is just imagining consequences.

Generally they can be boiled down to a few question we can ask about a
situation.

What about this problem am I uncertain about? What assumptions am I making?
How might I increase confidence in my solution?

Anyway...they are here for a while.

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jaunkst
When I hear mental model I am thinking more.of the lines of perception. The
value of a mental model is understanding it. To the extent of replicating or
teaching it. It is a model. A model is defining a set of relatable
understanding to another. Finding a commen sense set of abstractions.

