![]() If you know what you understand, you know where you have an edge over others. ![]() When ego and not competence drive what we undertake, we have massive blind spots. This is important to keep in mind as we think through problems and make better decisions. A map can also be a snapshot of a point in time, representing something that no longer exists. If a map were to represent the territory with perfect fidelity, it would no longer be a reduction and thus would no longer be useful to us. That’s because they are reductions of what they represent. To help you build your latticework of mental models so you can make better decisions, I’ve collected and summarized the most useful ones. You’ve got to hang experience on a latticework of models in your head.” You may have noticed students who just try to remember and pound back what is remembered. And you’ve got to array your experience both vicarious and direct on this latticework of models. If the facts don’t hang together on a latticework of theory, you don’t have them in a usable form. The first rule is that you can’t really know anything if you just remember isolated facts and try and bang ’em back. In a famous speech in the 1990s, Charlie Munger summed up the approach to practical wisdom through understanding mental models by saying: When they make decisions through only one lens, they miss the impact on others. None are wrong, but neither are any of them able to describe the full scope of the forest. When a botanist looks at a forest, they may focus on the ecosystem, an environmentalist sees the impact of climate change, a forestry engineer sees the state of the tree growth, and a business person sees the value of the land. If we’re only looking at the problem one way, we’ve got a blind spot. Putting these disciplines together allows us to walk around a problem in a three-dimensional way. But the person who can see the world through systems and evolution will make wiser choices and avoid more mistakes. A biologist thinks in terms of evolution. Rather than a broad latticework of mental models, we see the world through our chosen discipline. Most of us tend to specialize in a particular field. Does it allow you to see something you didn’t see before? Does it remove a blind spot?ĭeveloping a broad set of mental models is critical for removing blind spots. The real test of a model is not truth but utility. Mental models are not perfect, but they are useful. If you had perfect information about what happened and what would happen if you took a particular course of action, you would always make the best decision possible. The source of all poor choices is blind spots. In life and business, the person with the fewest blind spots wins. Understanding these ideas positions you to make fewer mistakes and take better actions. While there are thousands of mental models, only a hundred or so are broadly useful in daily life. ![]() They shape how we think and the opportunities we see. The models we use help us simplify complexity, filter information, and reason. Relativity is a mental model that shows us we have blind spots and how a different vantage point can change everything. Margin of Safety is a mental model that helps you understand things don’t always go as planned. Reciprocity is a mental model that helps you understand how going positive and going first can make a big difference. For example, velocity is a mental model that helps you understand that speed and direction both matter. Mental models are how we understand the world. We cannot keep all of the details in our heads, so we use models to simplify the complex into understandable and organized chunks. It applies to any idea, concept, or belief. A mental model is simply a mental compression of how something works.
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