The Great Mental Models Volume 2: Physics, Chemistry and Biology

The second law of thermodynamics states that entropy (a measure of disorder simply understood as energy unable to be used to do work) of an isolated system always increases.

And finally, thanks to you, the reader. I continue to be amazed by how many of you want to take this mental models journey with me. I hope this book is one you can reference time and again as you seek to better understand the world.

‘How can I work with the world, not against it?”

When you see someone doing something that doesn’t make sense to you, ask yourself what the world would have to look like to you for those actions to make sense.

in specific locations or eat particular foods. They are more prone to extinction. Specialists, therefore, have a harder time maintaining large population sizes because it is common for land conditions to change and for resources such as foods to diminish over time.

The Law of the Minimum states that the yield of a crop will always be dictated by the essential nutrient that is available at the lowest level. No matter how abundant the other essential nutrients are, being deficient in one will always limit the crop’s growth. If the level of that nutrient is increased, another will become the limiting factor.

As Kahneman explains, “A general ‘law of least effort’ applies to cognitive as well as physical exertion. The law asserts that if there are several ways of achieving the same goal, people will eventually gravitate to the least demanding course of action. In the economy of action, effort is a cost, and the acquisition of skill is driven by the balan

It teaches us that our best option when dealing with other people we cannot trust entirely is to reciprocate their choices. Seeing as we can rarely place full trust in anyone, especially if they stand to gain by screwing us over, we lean toward tit for tat. In general, we view this as fair and just.

There is a nuance here: that for humans survival is not merely a binary like dead/alive. We don’t want to just continue breathing, but to have a life that we perceive as having meaning, value, or at least a point.