The Best Mental Models
Reasoning by analogy, or copying what others are doing, is sort of like being a cover band where you’re playing somebody else’s music. Whereas with first-principles thinking, you go back to the fundamental raw materials of music, which are the notes, and then you build an original song from scratch. That is first-principles thinking.
Lenny Rachitsky • First-Principles Thinking
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
It’s crucial for us to understand as many mental models as possible. As the adage goes, a little knowledge can be dangerous and creates more problems than total ignorance. No single model is universally applicable – we find exceptions for nearly everything. Even hardcore physics has not been totally solved.
Farnam Street • All Models Are Wrong
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