6 ms·
Mental Models I Find Repeatedly Useful (2016)
- bradezone 8y agoHe finds 189 different models to be "repeatedly useful"? Hmmmm...
- LukeShu 8y agoThis was originally submitted with a title something like "Mental Models the DuckDuckGo founder finds useful", and the mods have apparently changed it to the title on Medium. I think that in instances like this, who "I" is is important context to HN readers scrolling through the front page. Perhaps it would be better to do the brackets thing editors do when clarifying something in a quote: "Mental Models I [the founder of DuckDuckGo] Find Repeatedly Useful"
- febin 8y agoI used the title "Mental Models used by the founder of DuckDuckGo". But yeah, the bracket format makes more sense. Will keep this in mind, next time I post something similar here.
- dang 8y agoWe reverted the title back to the original since it wasn't misleading or clickbait. That's in the guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. On HN, the first person in a title refers to the author of the article, not the submitting account. That seems simple and sufficient. It isn't necessary, nor possible, nor even desirable for an 80-char title to explain everything. It's good for HN readers to have to work a little. https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comment&storyText=false&prefix=false&page=0&query=by:dang%20%22work%20a%20little%22 https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme....
- abnry 8y agoThis looks very nice. If you have an excellent grasp of each item in this list, you should be able to interact well well with any kind of thinking person.
- sikhnerd 8y ago(2016) Previously: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12040707 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12040707
- jonahx 8y agoTwo similar lists: Kent Beck's: https://www.facebook.com/notes/kent-beck/a-searching-and-fearless-intellectual-inventory/1179765038723025 https://www.facebook.com/notes/kent-beck/a-searching-and-fea... Another one: https://www.defmacro.org/2016/12/22/models.html https://www.defmacro.org/2016/12/22/models.html
- kelvin0 8y agoTrying to remember the items in the list of enumerated mental models described is a feat in itself. This does not seem like a very practical approach for an MM 'n00b' ...
- febin 8y agoThere were some people here in HN trying to solve this problem. Have a look at this one https://github.com/marcelinollano/mental-models https://github.com/marcelinollano/mental-models
- coldtea 8y agoYou don't have to remember them exactly, memorize them all, know them in order or whatever. Just read about them, make some notes, try some of the ones you didn't know about, and so on. If you did found them useful, revisit over time.
- gdubs 8y agoIf I could recommend one item from the list: the 80/20 principle.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- r4um 8y agoFarnam Street curation is also good https://fs.blog/mental-models/ https://fs.blog/mental-models/
- cm2012 8y agoI would add one: 90% of the time someone acts irrationally (and they're not mentally ill) it's due to insecurity of some sort.
- disishhsha 8y agoI’d expand this a lot. When someone tells you something about his or herself, there’s a good chance they are trying to convince themselves of it. I don’t mean that people are dishonest. It’s more that we mostly learn about one another’s internal mental lives by telling each other about them. And our ability to maintain a consistent theory of mind is limited. We walk around worrying about this or that, and then we expose our mental states to one another with a snippet of a stream of consciousness. So it’s only natural we are constantly exposing our personal fears to one another.
- trustmath 8y agoWe change as we interact. This is just as easily explainable through a perceptive bias - the difference between experiencing and having experienced.
- PavlovsCat 8y ago> Although nobody knows whom he reveals when he discloses himself in deed or word, he must be willing to risk the disclosure. -- Hannah Arendt
- erikpukinskis 8y agoAnother corollary: 50% of the things people tell you are true, are things they wish were true but know are not.
- kochikame 8y agoI guess the trick is figuring out which 50% is which
- erikpukinskis 8y ago
- aisofteng 8y agoI don’t understand the point of this list. It’s just a list of concepts on various degrees of commonality. What’s the motivation of making a list like this? What’s the benefit?
- maroonblazer 8y agoThe author answers that question in the introduction: "I find mental models are useful to try to make sense of things and to help generate ideas."
- mattnewport 8y agoI've seen Charlie Munger's talk mentioned in the article in the past too and my main takeaway is that apparently people think in very different ways because I have the same reaction as you and don't understand the value or purpose of a list like this.
- Rainymood 8y agoI like Polya's method as well: 1. Understand the problem 2. Devise a plan 3. Execute said plan 4. Review and reflect This is a nice framework to attack any problem with. It won't necessarily give you a solution but it provides a nice springboard.
- yogrish 8y agohttps://fs.blog/mental-models/ https://fs.blog/mental-models/
- hkon 8y agoIf I were to pick one of these. BATNA has been the most profitable one for me. It's truly amazing what this unlocks in negotiations if you have actively considered it.
- trevyn 8y agoAlso, it gets super weird when your BATNA is not measured in dollars.
- nazgulnarsil 8y agoDon't miss out on two of the biggest benefits: mapping your own rather than trying to learn someone else's list, and then refactoring the list you wind up with for more compact representation. The easy way to do this was I just noted down any time I noticed myself using a mental model for about 2 weeks. Once new entries started tapering off I did the compression by trying to spot ways I could organize the list into categories or relations. This significantly improved the clarity of my thinking.