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Similar to https://fs.blog/mental-models/ https://fs.blog/mental-models/

motohagiography 4y ago
Highly recommend the newsletter as well. What's smart about FS and this Untools site is these models are compact ideas you can iterate the logic of into some really sophisticated views. Things like the Ishikawa diagram on Untools are really new worldviews. I bought Edward Tufte's data visualization books back at the turn of the century, and his objection to powerpoint reduced to how the form of a visualization conveys an underlying logic of ideas by virtue of the dimensions it displays and the number of them that were strictly meaningful ("ink to data ratio"). Viz that only displayed one data variable but added a bunch of "chartjunk," like effects and weird shapes, was not informative but essentially just bizarre totalitarian propaganda. Some of these mental models and decision support tools are multi-variate systems for evaluating pretty much anything, which makes them almost the basis for alternate ideologies about how to evaluate a dynamic or criticize an idea. Sometimes I suspect what we think of as genius is really just a privately developed ideology based on a few evaluation principles like the ones linked on this thread.
- monroewalker 4y ago
  Hm, how is the Ishikawa diagram more useful than an outline? They seem to capture and structure information very similarly
  - kqr 4y ago
    It implies a different direction, I suppose. One of constructing a whole from parts, rather than decomposing the whole into parts. This can be meaningful in cases where the whole changes as part of the construction process. If I wanted to deconstruct the things in soap, I would probably not have a branch for "lye", because all lye has (thankfully) reacted away from the end product. But if I constructed a fishbone chart for the same soap, then lye is one of the first ingredients I would list. Sometimes looking at the same thing from a different angle helps you realise things you otherwise wouldn't. If you find it does not, then an outline is good enough for you!

Highly recommend the newsletter as well. What's smart about FS and this Untools site is these models are compact ideas you can iterate the logic of into some really sophisticated views. Things like the Ishikawa diagram on Untools are really new worldviews. I bought Edward Tufte's data visualization books back at the turn of the century, and his objection to powerpoint reduced to how the form of a visualization conveys an underlying logic of ideas by virtue of the dimensions it displays and the number of them that were strictly meaningful ("ink to data ratio"). Viz that only displayed one data variable but added a bunch of "chartjunk," like effects and weird shapes, was not informative but essentially just bizarre totalitarian propaganda. Some of these mental models and decision support tools are multi-variate systems for evaluating pretty much anything, which makes them almost the basis for alternate ideologies about how to evaluate a dynamic or criticize an idea. Sometimes I suspect what we think of as genius is really just a privately developed ideology based on a few evaluation principles like the ones linked on this thread.

monroewalker 4y ago
Hm, how is the Ishikawa diagram more useful than an outline? They seem to capture and structure information very similarly
- kqr 4y ago
  It implies a different direction, I suppose. One of constructing a whole from parts, rather than decomposing the whole into parts. This can be meaningful in cases where the whole changes as part of the construction process. If I wanted to deconstruct the things in soap, I would probably not have a branch for "lye", because all lye has (thankfully) reacted away from the end product. But if I constructed a fishbone chart for the same soap, then lye is one of the first ingredients I would list. Sometimes looking at the same thing from a different angle helps you realise things you otherwise wouldn't. If you find it does not, then an outline is good enough for you!