Cannot recommend this comment enough. > The reason why it's terrible is because mental models are like a sort of jumbled set of tools, copied over from somewhe

Cannot recommend this comment enough. > The reason why it's terrible is because mental models are like a sort of jumbled set of tools, copied over from somewhere else. I disagree with this slightly, I think Mental Models are great for the mental modeler but almost impossible to transfer. > Deep and genuine knowledge is tacit, integrated, incorporates experience and is organic. It's acquired through training and expertise and often can't be verbalized or formalized. This is gold. Deep and genuine knowledge is created from repeated interactions and pattern matching born of errors and successes fortified repeatedly till they become reflex. No matter how many Charlie Munger articles and speeches and case studies I read, I can never invert like Charlie Munger. >Relying on mental models is a sort of crutch. Maybe a good comparison is chess playing. If you're a new chess player you learn that pieces are worth X points, and that such and such squares are important, and that's basically like these sorts of models. Really good chess players don't consciously think like that, at least not in a sort of pronounced way. They've incorporated knowledge and play by intuition. They can make 'good moves' in a second or two. Exactly and they find it very difficult to accurately explain what they are doing. Even if they can, their explanations fall apart under scrutiny. Like asking a dog how it catches a frisbee. A university educated dog who talks might spew some garbage about solving a set of differential equations in its head but really it is just evolved instinct which has been honed. Much knowledge is like that layered with a ex-post rationalization.