
Useful Mental Models (2016) - Mougatine
http://www.defmacro.org/2016/12/22/models.html
======
quickthrower2
It would be good to include some mental models for attitude towards money.
Things I have noticed about myself:

No problem paying for something that absolutely needs to be done. E.g. repair
a leak in the roof. Replace something.

Don't notice money spent on regular monthly payments. E.g. mortgage.

Don't notice $1000 spent as 50*$20 but more frightening to spend $1000 at
once.

Fear of loss when investing is big. It feels like such a leap of faith to
invest in anything.

However spending the same money as the investment on a holiday is OK for some
reason.

Easier emotionally to not earn $1000 than to earn it and spend it, even though
the financial outcome is the same. Has nothing to do with working hard etc.

It's hard to hodl!

~~~
gerad
Earn $1000 = $500 after taxes. :)

~~~
c3534l
More like 800, I don't know why people like to exaggerate how much goes to
taxes. Median marginal federal tax rate is 15%, which means on average it's
less than that.

~~~
vostok
I would be very surprised if the median HN user had a marginal tax rate of
15%. At last year's rates, I would expect something like 36%. Of this, 28% is
federal, 1.45% is payroll, and 9.3% is state. These add up to more than 36%
because of deductions.

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jonahx
Kent Beck has a similarly-themed list of mental models:

[https://www.facebook.com/notes/kent-beck/a-searching-and-
fea...](https://www.facebook.com/notes/kent-beck/a-searching-and-fearless-
intellectual-inventory/1179765038723025)

I love the idea of cataloging your interests at this high-level of
abstraction, and wish it were more common.

~~~
alexpetralia
In case there is any interest, I write a bi-weekly newsletter on mental
models, covering not just the concept but how you can apply them to your life:
[https://alexpetralia.github.io/newsletters](https://alexpetralia.github.io/newsletters)

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branweb
The founder of DuckDuckGo published a similar list of mental models a little
before this one. His list is longer, but there is some overlap between it and
this one:

[https://medium.com/@yegg/mental-models-i-find-repeatedly-
use...](https://medium.com/@yegg/mental-models-i-find-repeatedly-
useful-936f1cc405d)

------
vanzorn
A personal favorite on the subject of mental models: A Lesson on Elementary,
Worldly Wisdom As It Relates To Investment Management & Business Charles
Munger, USC Business School, 1994

[http://old.ycombinator.com/munger.html](http://old.ycombinator.com/munger.html)

~~~
kaycebasques
As far as I can tell, Munger is the one who really popularized the notion of
mental models, so this is a must-read.

For anyone not in the know, Munger is Warren Buffett's business partner. The
basic idea is to collect an interdisciplinary checklist of different paradigms
for viewing the world, and then run through that checklist and apply each mode
of thinking to whatever tough problem you're working through.

HN readers probably already know all of this, but I just love this approach to
thinking and wanted to share the wealth :)

------
kaycebasques
Great list! Two criticisms:

1\. One mental model that I applied when reading this post on mental models
(so meta!) is "audience". As I was reading I thought to myself, "Who is this
guy? Why should I trust his mental models? Is he living a life that I want to
duplicate?" I mean it with respect and with no malice towards him, he's
probably awesome. It's also possible to pick up useful mental models from
people that you may not necessarily want to emulate. All I'm pointing out is
that it's been really useful for me to consider the motivations and track
record of the person giving me advice, before I take that advice to heart.

2\. It's a long list! I wonder if it'd be more fruitful to have a shorter
list, but to apply each mental model rigorously, every time. Charlie Munger
(the guy who popularized mental models, as far as I can tell) himself is a
huge advocate of checklists. I remember him saying something along the lines
of "you have to be disciplined about your mental models. You have to apply
every one, every time. You can't pick and choose."

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joe_the_user
_Efficient market hypothesis_

That's a kind of ideological way to phrase the situation. It's easier to just
describe the "stable market hypothesis"; however things are organized is the
way that market structures have stably gone and thus can't easily be changed
(whether market are efficient or not). This includes all the points in the
parent _plus_ the point that you may have improved on app/gimzo X
significantly over the weekend but the market probably still won't jump to
your solution easily because of mind-share/network-effect/existing-
investment/market-leader's-connection-to-customers/etc.

~~~
arundelo
The efficient-market hypothesis is an idea that already has a well-known name.
In the article the words are a Wikipedia link.

~~~
joe_the_user
Indeed, I'm pretty familiar with it. It is well known, not universally
accepted and a variety of ideology implications go along with it.

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mythrwy
Most of these are really good, especially productivity and time estimation.

Some I do not agree with (although perhaps the model presented is useful
depending on desired outcome).

-Efficient market hypothesis: Markets are not fully efficient and the state of the world is not optimal. Thus opportunities exist. It's our job as engineers (and business people/humanitarians/writers/philosophers etc.) to recognize and correct these inefficiencies. Look for them. Its not easy and thus is called work. Do it anyway.

-Base Rates: People are over-optimistic. They are also bad at finding similar things to compare.

-Emic vs Etic: Dangerous form of mental laziness. While it might be "efficient" it leads to underestimating people and phenomenon, missing out on valuable information and, as the old saying goes, judging books by their covers. Sometimes valuable lessons and opportunities can be found in strange places. And often it isn't even what is said or even "anti-lessons". Better to remain somewhat open and listen without preconception and with consideration as much as possible.

-Bias for Action: Unsure about this one. Looking back I'm not sure if I regret more actions I didn't take or actions I took that were mistakes. I think probably the second has had more negative impact. But I've been a fairly active person, maybe for a less active person it would different. In my case though very often doing nothing would have been the better choice.

-Charitable interpretations: These do make relationships go better. Especially for people who take advantage of others. I'd recommend outward charitable interpretation, inward cynicism. It's usually more accurate for prediction. But cynicism does make a person unpleasant and negative so best not to display it.

-Global Utility: A dangerous precedent. But sometimes yes, indeed needed. Be extremely careful of deals with the devil though and prefer principal, honer and fairness as much as possible. The long term gains are usually greater. The long term effects of short term utility can sometimes be fatal.

-Reasonable Person Principal: Meh "reasonable" can be whatever a group decides. It's not always good. However, no need to keep someone around who doesn't fit the agenda. Hopefully you don't see them in the 30 under 30 list in a few years though.

Otherwise it's a pretty good list.

~~~
dancek
This was a really good viewpoint as it made me realize that the listed things
are not only useful mental models but deeply connected to values. These models
are used to guide your thinking which will affect your behavior. Therefore
it's very important to be careful with what rules-of-thumb you decide to
follow.

Of course, it's also important to reflect on your thinking and be able to spot
the exception that proves the rule. But it's unrealistic to be constantly
vigilant about your own analysis of things. You need abstractions (eg. mental
models) to be efficient, but leaky abstractions will ruin you.

------
aizatto
I think this is great! I love to explore how I think by asking myself
questions on how I do things, be it decision making or planning.

I created this site which I use to help me figure things out.

[https://www.deepthoughtapp.com/en/topics/decisions/](https://www.deepthoughtapp.com/en/topics/decisions/)
[https://www.deepthoughtapp.com/en/topics/planning/](https://www.deepthoughtapp.com/en/topics/planning/)

------
shidhin
Great list. Incidentally I started an Instagram and Twitter account this week,
to stick to my resolution for continued learning, where I plan to post one
mental model per day. Please check it out if you're interested, and I'd
appreciate your feedback.

[https://www.instagram.com/mental.models/](https://www.instagram.com/mental.models/)
[https://twitter.com/learnmodels/](https://twitter.com/learnmodels/)

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K0SM0S
Nice. This is a good addition to "List of cognitive biases", a Wikipedia
article I've liked to read from time to time ever since I discovered it, years
ago.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases)

As a Stoic, it's good food for thought to improve your "perception" of life
and the world.

~~~
myaso
I personally find a lot of the material about cognitive biases hard to swallow
-- I was forcing myself really hard when I read Kahneman's book. There were
some good points but while reading it something just _seemed_ off in a way
similar to trying to break down the world into a rigid dichotomy -- likes "is
the a ok approximate anwser?" "Yes" "Would I use it?" "Possibly with great
skeptism and appropriate weight given the context, but likely not"

~~~
K0SM0S
I still have to read that book. Thanks for reminding me.

About rigid dichotomies though, including the page I linked, I think it's a
cognitive bias in and out of itself.

I take these observations as "food for thought", literally, not ready-made
conclusions to swallow. A good basis to reflect upon things, but it's just
that, the initial spark.

~~~
myaso
I agree. But I think the value these biases actually provide in helping to
understand what is going are more limited than people make them out to be.
It's much more powerful to simply internalize the worldview of somebody who
knew what they were doing, or several of them -- you're not starting from
scratch and you're not using _models_ like a dictionary without knowing how to
write.

------
bello
Farnam Street Blog also has their comprehensive list of mental models:
[https://www.farnamstreetblog.com/mental-
models/](https://www.farnamstreetblog.com/mental-models/)

------
xtony
What does LRU (least recently used) have to do with picking the highest-
priority problem?

But overall, pretty good overview and I appreciate the links to other sources.

~~~
DrImplausible
To pick an example out of thin air, think of stage act trying to keep a number
of plates spinning. You can keep a number of them going, but the LRU one is
the one most likely of falling because it's lost some energy, and you need to
check it to keep it up in the air.

~~~
AnimalMuppet
That's a great explanation for something the article didn't explain very well.

Still, LRU only works if they are of equal importance. Otherwise, work on the
important one, even if you've worked on it more recently than the others.

A related idea is the "tyranny of the urgent". You can't let the urgent things
keep you from doing the important things. (I stole this from a booklet with
the quoted title, which stole the idea from the manager of a cotton mill.)

------
ChubbyGlasses
_Front page test – an ethical standard for behavior that evaluates each action
through the lens of the media /outside world._

 _Example: What would happen if HN found out we’re mining our users’s IMs?_

I feel like I might be okay with it if was a university (.edu domain) and I
knew it was anonymized. Not sure I'd be okay with a random blog doing that.

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rubicon33
lots of models for combating optimism, but few for combating pessimism.

written for sure from the perspective of an optimist.

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ww520
Wow. This is a great list. I've seen individual ideas here and there but never
put together in a list. This is excellent for exploring these ideas in one
shot.

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b0rsuk
"The teaching method" \- I observed this myself while helping Python newbies
on the internet. Pretty often when you're answering a newbie question, you
gain a deeper understanding of the problem. Newbies don't ask exactly the same
questions as you have in the past, so you start seeing old problems in new
light. Also, you dust off your skills.

Moral of the story: helping people on IRC can be a fun and enlightening past-
time.

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ShabbosGoy
The method of loci[1] is missing from this list. I am a visual/spatial
learner, and find it quite useful for quick information storage and retrieval.

[1]
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Method_of_loci](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Method_of_loci)

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b0rsuk
Emic and Etic:

I observed that I very often disagree with people who use anime forum avatars.
A few of them came close to getting banned (I'm not a moderator anywhere),
others made really poor arguments.

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wslh
Re efficient market hypothesis + five forces: new markets are inefficient and
you can sit on top of a big opportunity. More, when your company has real
customer leads and profits.

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JonasJSchreiber
I appreciate the planning fallacy. I usually do this implicitly but I just
changed an expected timeline on a JIRA epic from 80 hours to 160 days after
reading this.

~~~
Afforess
Watch out - there is a reverse bias, Parkinson's law, that work expands so as
to fill the time available for its completion. This is why Elon Musk sets
absurd deadlines he rarely can meet, to resist the expansion of make-work and
administrative bloat which consumes longer-timed tasks.

~~~
kaybe
Work behaves like a gas: It fills all the available space (time) and the
smaller the space the more pressure you get.

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amelius
Nice, but imho the list should be accompanied by at least three real-world
examples per model.

Otherwise, many of the models may seem contrived and practically useless.

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mrfusion
The funny thing about expected value. Even if the expected value of a one
dollar lottery ticket was ten dollars, it still wouldn’t be worth playing.

~~~
jodrellblank
People always say lottery tickets have low expected return and aren't worth
buying, and then use that to conclude that people are stupid.

Instead of concluding that people do buy lottery tickets, so their model
doesn't accurately model "value".

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stanislavb
That's so useful. Everyone should read this list.

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JHH_18
Reminder? Good.

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Double_a_92
Theres a spelling error on "counterpary"

