Vocabulary as a Meta Mental Model

Improve your vocabulary.

The better your vocabulary, the more stories you can chunk, the more experiences you can pattern match.

The better your vocabulary, the more aware you become about possible categorization errors.

The better your vocabulary, the more things you can name, the richer your base of raw materials to hang new ideas and experiences on.

"Knowing where an idea doesn’t fit can be just as valuable as knowing where it fits."

Mastering these categories and where they apply will take time and experience. However, knowing the contradictions in each category helps master the category better. We’re using inversion to define the limits of the category.

Beware though. Don’t confuse knowing the name of something with knowing something.

Names are excellent for creating larger chunks, since when done right, they pack lots of information into a single sentence.

The collection of names is a dictionary. It helps you map different experiences to the same name. Not knowing which name to pin an experience with is a sign of confusion - you’re missing a category. If lots of different names fit, it’s a sign of nuance and complexity. Perhaps, it’s a lollapaloza effect.