Mental Models I Find Repeatedly Useful

High-context vs Low-context Culture — “In a higher-context culture, many things are left unsaid, letting the culture explain. Words and word choice become very important in higher-context communication, since a few words can communicate a complex message very effectively to an in-group (but less effectively outside that group), while in a low-conte

Arguing from First Principles — “A first principle is a basic, foundational, self-evident proposition or assumption that cannot be deduced from any other proposition or assumption.” (related: dimensionality reduction; orthogonality; “Reasonable minds can disagree” if underlying premises differ.)

Power-law — “A functional relationship between two quantities, where a relative change in one quantity results in a proportional relative change in the other quantity, independent of the initial size of those quantities: one quantity varies as a power of another.” (related: Pareto distribution; Pareto principle — “for many events, roughly 80% of th

IQ vs EQ — “IQ is a total score derived from one of several standardized tests designed to assess human intelligence.” “EQ is the capacity of individuals to recognize their own, and other people’s emotions, to discriminate between different feelings and label them appropriately, and to use emotional information to guide thinking and behavior.”

Introversion vs Extraversion — “Extraversion tends to be manifested in outgoing, talkative, energetic behavior, whereas introversion is manifested in more reserved and solitary behavior. Virtually all comprehensive models of personality include these concepts in various forms.”

Dunning-Kruger Effect — “Relatively unskilled persons suffer illusory superiority, mistakenly assessing their ability to be much higher than it really is…[and] highly skilled individuals may underestimate their relative competence and may erroneously assume that tasks which are easy for them are also easy for others.” (related: overconfidence effec

Consequence vs Conviction — “Where there is low consequence and you have very low confidence in your own opinion, you should absolutely delegate. And delegate completely, let people make mistakes and learn. On the other side, obviously where the consequences are dramatic and you have extremely high conviction that you are right, you actually can’t

Hanlon’s Razor — “Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by carelessness.” (related: fundamental attribution error — “ the tendency for people to place an undue emphasis on internal characteristics of the agent (character or intention), rather than external factors, in explaining another person’s behavior in a given situation.

Parkinson’s Law — “Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.”