Mental Models
Notes
It is one thing to know the known mental models. But the real value comes from knowing where and how to apply them - across disciplines. The major disciplines have their respective mental models. The interesting part and creativity comes from applying the models to situations where it is not obvious that they apply. As a simple example - consider Inertia. This applies to physics - but one can easily see the application of this law in business and other areas. It appears that the application of mental models in far-fetched cases is the true genius of knowing how to work with mental models. Because the obvious mental models - everyone can see them. The less obvious applications - can lead to profound creative insight - in that simply few people can make the connection. The value of interdisciplinary, open, rapid learning lies in having a broad base of knowledge - so that connections between the disciplines can be made fluently.
Examples
OSE Specific
Collections
- Farnam Street List - [1]- looks better than Weinberg below. Here's the deal: on
Problem Solving
- "I don’t want to be a great-problem-solver. I want to avoid problems – prevent them from happening and doing right from the beginning." — Peter Bevelin on Seeking Wisdom, Mental Models, Learning, and a Lot More
Books
- Super Thinking by Gabriel Weinberg (founder of DuckDuckGo) - [2]. Reviews - [3]. Critical review - [Over long passages it feels the author copy-pasted from Daniel Kahneman's Thinking Fast and Slow, Rolf Dobelli's The Art of Thinking Clearly, Malcolm Gladwell's Blink, etc. for his own notebook and decided to publish it afterwards.]
Links
- Logical Fallacies
- General Semantics - states that all we have are mental models - they are all abstractions of reality. This is the seminal work for driving ourselves sane.