The Best Mental Models
The map is not the territory is a mental model that reminds us not to confuse a model of a situation with the situation itself.
Your Innovator’s Toolkit: The map is not the territory
If you don't have the underlying experience, then it just reads like a collection of quotes. It's cool, it's inspirational for a moment, maybe you'll make a nice poster out of it. But then you forget it and move on. Mental models are really just compact ways for you to recall your own knowledge.
Eric Jorgenson • Almanack of Naval Ravikant
The Circle of Competence is a mental model that involves developing a knowledge of what specific areas an individual has an understanding of or experience in. Everyone has built up useful knowledge in some area of the world. By realizing where your strengths lie, you can determine the areas where you have very little familiarity and avoid them to... See more
What is the Circle of Competence and How Do You Find Yours? | MyWallSt
“Invert, always invert: Turn a situation or problem upside down. Look at it backwards. What happens if all our plans go wrong? Where don’t we want to go, and how do you get there?
"Instead of looking for success, make a list of how to fail instead–through sloth, envy, resentment, self-pity, entitlement, all the mental habits of self-defeat. Avoid... See more
"Instead of looking for success, make a list of how to fail instead–through sloth, envy, resentment, self-pity, entitlement, all the mental habits of self-defeat. Avoid... See more
Inversion
You may have noticed students who just try to remember and pound back what is remembered. Well, they fail in school and in life. You've got to hang experience on a latticework of models in your head. What are the models? Well, the first rule is that you've got to have multiple models— because if you just have one or two that you're using, the... See more
Charlie Munger • A Lesson On Elementary, Worldly Wisdom As It Relates To Investment Management & Business – Charles Munger, USC Business School, 1994
Incentives are what drive human behavior. If you want to change the way people behave, think about changing their incentives. Most people look at the function utility instead of the emotional benefit. What’s the real human motivation for expensive headphones is not to hear better but for reputation and status
Species tend to adapt to their surroundings in order to survive, given the combination of their genetics and their environment – an always-unavoidable combination. However, adaptations made in an individual’s lifetime are not passed down genetically, as was once thought: Populations of species adapt through the process of evolution by natural... See more
Farnam Street • Mental Models: The Best Way to Make Intelligent Decisions (~100 Models Explained)
The Red Queen Effect