Mental Models

So I think one way to think about the human drive for explanation is in terms of the motivations and emotions that drive it, and I think we’ve all had these experiences. So one side of it, we have curiosity. We really want to know why certain things happen the way they do, why they happen at all. And that’s part of what really initiates the process... See more

If something doesn’t work, you reflect on the situation, make an adjustment, and try again, over and over until you reach your end destination.

Agency, then, in my opinion, is not only action, but an undying commitment to iteration. Learning and doing in unison. Making mistakes and correcting mistakes without being seduced back into a comforting... See more

When you're talking about rewards now versus later, most of us prefer the rewards now.

When we're making a conscious decision, there are all of these different inputs, including our emotions, the social context that we're in, and the temporal scale. Like you were saying, what's happening that would be immediately available or rewarding to me right now versus something that I might care about in the future? How certain is the outcome?... See more

I do think that the way that neuroscientists use the word value is different than the colloquial use. The way that many people who think about big-V values, like the kinds of aspirational or higher-level things that we care about most that are fundamental to us, that's one input to our daily decision making. But fundamentally, as a neuroscientist,... See more

The hypothesis here is that if you work hard on a problem, you soak your subconscious with it. Wrestling with a problem helps you build a mental model of what you know and what you don’t—providing the subconscious with building blocks to work with. (You can’t have genuine intuition and inspiration in areas where you lack knowledge.) Then, once you... See more