I posted this comment in an earlier thread on Mental Models but here it goes again. Remember when someone is pushing something ask yourself - what is their age

I posted this comment in an earlier thread on Mental Models but here it goes again. Remember when someone is pushing something ask yourself - what is their agenda? Farnam Street's Shane Parrish is the newsletter and subscription business, just like CNBC is in the financial infotainment business not in the investment or wealth creation business. They want you think of them as the authority by peddling ideas from an place of authority without actually providing a track record of success. CNBC's Jim Cramer's stock recommendations on evaluation had a worse than S&P record and subsequently pulled from his site. Mental model are quite interesting to read but applying them is another matter. It like asking Tiger Woods for golf lessons. I have been reading mental models for a couple decades now. I decided to pick one model and focus on applying it - invert always invert. This one simple rule has been really hard to apply. One, it is really really hard to remember to apply in the heat of decision making. Two, you cannot just apply it. That requires practice with an expert practitioner like an apprenticeship (guilds), extended internship (law/finance) or residency (medicine). You cannot just pick it up by reading a damn article or book. Let me give an analogy of trying to reason about physical properties from first principles which is another "mental model". This is another popular exhortation - think from first principles just like Feynman or Fermi. Apparently, Fermi figured out the yield from the first test nuclear blast by tossing paper confetti over his head and calculating the yield from the scatter from the blast wave. I can think from first principles in one extremely narrow field where I happen to have half a decade of education and 20 years of experience. To reason from first principles like Fermi or Feynman in a broad domain like physics requires a world class mind, a world class education and a world of experience. Seriously, WTF. Most mental model writing is akin to consuming youtube fitness porn. It looks easy to do, you look cool doing it and the end results are just spectacular. However, like Arnold or David Goggins it requires an inhuman dedication, purpose, ability to withstand pain, bounce back from trauma and just keep sacrificing attitude for a couple of decades with a healthy dose of failure. Most of the time the only person benefiting is the video creator from the ad-roll. I appreciate the posts but I now believe these mental models are incredibly hard to do and like most of the self-improvement/growth hacking genre is just good for entertainment and commerce 99.99% of the time.