Five Helpful Mental Models to Improve Our Thinking
How to improve our thinking about the world.
I read Farnham Street's a lot to improve my thinking about the world It has many models that can help improve our thinking about the world. Mental models are ways of thinking about a topic in such a way as to improve or change the prior perspective. They are methods despite the madness. Most of my models are learned from experience or are models I read about. I will present five mental models here, three from experience, and two from the models I read about. My hope is that they can change the way you think or at least give you a new perspective on old topics.
Expect the unexpected
There were five unexpected events for every expected event that happened in my life. I didn’t expect to be working where I worked at first or living where I lived after college. I didn’t even expect to go to the college I ended up going to. Unexpected events, sometimes good, sometimes bad, are the epitome of nature. The cure for Polio was unimaginable just a few years earlier. It came out of nowhere and there was no way anybody in 1900 could have expected that Polio and many other illnesses would be cured in just a few decades. The American war planners didn’t expect Japan to launch such a brazen attack at Pearl Harbor on December 7th, 1941. Sure there was concern about Japan but no idea of the scale of attack they were planning.
Likewise, the later atomic bombs came out of nowhere. Today the bombs seem normal but at the time, they were something out of some apocalyptic sci-fi pulp magazine. They were thousands of times larger than any explosive at the time and nobody had any idea of what could be causing the . For some children, they thought the white flakes that fell were snow. Political wins like those of Barack Obama are quite unexpected, especially considering the political climate just a few years earlier. but it actually turned out differently. Nassim Taleb’s book investigates the phenomenon of unexpected events that transpire that change history.
Like black swans, these events are the first of their kind and can be entirely unexpected. Coronavirus, the rise of the internet, the fall of the Soviet Union, and the election of Barack Obama are all black swans, firsts that come from out of nowhere. They can’t be easily predicted and can change everything very quickly. Very rarely can the future be entirely understood and usually we have to cope with reality, which is we don’t understand it at all. The future in my life wasn’t always great but often it was unexpected. Expect the unexpected. It may come as a sudden surprise or slowly but whatever way it comes, expect to be unexpectedly surprised.
The map is not the territory
Old sailors were a superstitious bunch. They that were used in Renaissance Europe. They hadn’t explored the depths of the ocean yet and thought it was filled with dangerous sea monsters. Many sailors were terrified of the giant spiked snakes in the sea or the tentacles of the depths that would toss their boats over. In reality, there are very few sea monsters in that ocean. There are some large sharks and the . However, nothing is as large or dangerous as depicted in the maps. Maps are inaccurate by definition since they are just approximations of the real territory. Maps don’t only include physical maps but also models, approximations, equations, code, language, diagnoses, principles, and even hopes, fears, and dreams.
Napoleon saw Russia on a map but didn’t understand . His advisors warned him against it and they weren’t wrong. If Napolean had hoped the war would be over in 20 days, it was not, it took months and it failed to cross the icy and cold Russian plains. For him, Russia was just some country on a map but the misunderstanding of the logistical reality of Russia was a failure. Conquering Russia was unlike Germany or Italy, it was a much more complex logistical nightmare, like it was for Adolf Hitler over a century later. Russia has never been successfully invaded and probably never will be by any great power.
Models like maps fail all the time, and housing markets fail. to predict the electoral votes Hillary Clinton would get. Nate gave Clinton 302 electoral votes It’s not entirely his fault, models fail, and they fail often, especially when the situation changes dramatically or parts of reality aren’t accounted for or seen in the model. Models fail because we don’t and can’t know everything. Models also include stereotypes and concepts. We might have some idea of Haiti in our mind, corrupt, dog-eating, and dirty, but these are thrown out the window by that rival other islands in the Caribbean or by people who eat what we eat.
Systems like models can fail, the Soviet Union was supposed to last 10,000 years. It was preordained to be the economic model that would unite the world in a new world order. The Soviet Union fell apart in the late 1990s because Russia was undergoing severe economic stresses along with new openness policies that undid the stringent control system the Soviets had built. Economic models fail like everything else that is just approximate. This includes those models that are generated by artificial intelligence or by humans. Relying on them too much will inevitably cause problems because they are not reality. Relying on any map or model of reality will fail when you reach the outer bounds.
Fear is the mind-killer
Let’s go back to the story of the old medieval sailors. Because they didn’t understand the ocean, they thought it was filled with dangerous creatures that would capsize their boats. There were genuine dangers on the ocean but these came more from storms and other opportunistic sailors. The creatures they imagined weren’t as dangerous as they thought. Sometimes the danger comes more from what you don’t fear than what you do. Some sailors braved the ocean despite the danger. These sailors would go down in history as explorers: Columbus, Magellan, Drake, and Vespucci.
Fear is a reasonable response in some situations but it’s not the full response to be taken in every situation. Sometimes fear can be a setback. Fear is wider than the ocean that you sail. The early sailors and mapmakers were often terrified of phantoms that were more harmless than they were first led to believe. A great example is in the where the evil aliens turn out to be a group of scientists in a plot. There were real aliens, the native girl, Crystal, and her dog, who were blue aliens in disguise. However, those were not the scary aliens in the movie. Oftentimes horror is a genre we may enjoy but it’s not reality. Well unless you want it to be, reality is often more mundane.
You’re more in danger from paper cuts or being stuck in a traffic jam than Freddy from Five Nights at Freddie’s. The map seems darker than it actually is, and although it may have pitfalls what you mapped out is not necessarily the reality. The reality may be more mundane or it may be more complex than you first imagined. Often what you’re afraid of is not the real danger. There is a real danger but it’s not as obvious but still dangerous. In Star Wars, everybody was afraid of the separatists but nobody suspected the chancellor who would betray the republic to become emperor. Jesus never suspected Judas but he was more dangerous than the Romans.
If you had asked most Americans in 1970 who would launch the largest attack on the country since the 1940s they would have said the Soviets but they’d be entirely wrong. The danger came from where they were not looking. Everybody is afraid of sharks even though they kill only a dozen or so people a year but the cars they drive and idiotic drivers are far more dangerous. Many people are afraid of the dark but the sun can kill you much easier with many more methods to destroy your cells. Skin cancer, radiation, and many other ways. Fear can cripple and it can slow your life down to a halt. Getting past it, and finding a way beyond is difficult but rewarding in the end.
Reason is reasonable
Does 5 + 5 = 10 look right? What about 5 + 4 = 10? Why does that look wrong? 5 + 4 = 10 violates our innate mathematical knowledge of what addition should look like. When something violates our innate sense of reason we might recoil in horror. We’re right to do that, 5 + 4 = 10 is wrong, in nearly every mathematical axiom set. You would have to rewrite the definition of the integers to make it work. Likewise, using reason is not a bad thing. Reason had gotten a bad rap, new age cults reign supreme on TikTok, evangelical religious fervor gets promoted as “faith,” and politicians appealing to the masses through demagoguery get more airtime than real substantive issues.
Reason is not about emotion, love, joy, sadness, or anger, it’s not about personal feelings, it’s not about appealing to the lowest common denominator, or feeling righteous. It’s about what is logically correct, like in a Spock way. If you’ve ever watched the old Star Trek films and shows or some of the more recent ones including those with androids like Data. You get a taste of what it’s like. I may not like a political candidate but his policy may be reasonable or the data may support his argument. I used to listen to old Richard Dawkins tapes debating with Islamic preachers and like him or not Richard is logical. I don’t always agree with his position and I think he’s a bit arrogant but he’s not wrong. Listen to his debate with or He makes them sound insane and he’s not wrong.
Despite my disagreement with the skeptic community on UFOs; I think that they are right on a lot, just not UFOs. Reason has fallen into disrepute as unreasonableness has pervaded the world. However, the skeptic community has been unreasonable about UFOs when there is a lot of good evidence of their reality. Following reason will never lead you to the wrong answer in the same way that following a precise algorithm leads to the correct solution. If something doesn’t logically look right, it probably isn’t. Find the missing number that will make the math work. Reason is reasonable because it means we can understand the world better.
Timing is everything
My entire life has often been one of disappointment and regret. I rarely ever got what I wanted. I’m not alone in this, Napolean never bested his British enemy and Martin Luther King never got his wish that racism would be eliminated from the country. You may never get millions, the car you wanted, or the lottery win. You may never travel to the place you want or find the job you like the best. That’s reality, hope is often futile. However, you will get something. It may not be what you wanted but it will be something. Napolean got an empire that didn’t include Britain or Russia but it did include most of Germany, France, and Italy.
A lot of life is luck and some proper planning. Had Napolean been a few centuries earlier or had Russia had an unreasonably warm winter and scattered rebellions keeping the Tsar occupied, it’s not unreasonable to wonder whether he would have won. Barack Obama’s win wouldn’t have been possible a few decades earlier, and had he been born too early, he never would have been able to become president. What happens to you often depends on where you are and when you are. If you are born in the U.S. you will likely be 100 times wealthier than somebody living in Afghanistan. If you were born in a country that the British colonized you likely speak English or know it, which gives you a leg up on the internet-connected world.
If you are born today, you are hundreds of times less likely to die of many diseases like cholera or polio that once plagued the world. A person today can become much more famous and well-known in a short time compared to hundreds of years ago. It took decades for performers to gain notoriety which can be had in just a few months with the right messaging and connections. When you were born is often as important as where. , and while they may be in decline overall. Americans are more intelligent than they were just two centuries ago. In sports, timing is essential, hit too late and the ball won’t have enough velocity to spin out of the ring.
If you’re late to class and you miss the lecture about the time of the final, then good luck passing the final that you didn’t even know about. We take time for granted but time is what we are made of. We think we’re made of atoms but we’re just time. Without time there is no change and therefore no chemical changes and the body itself. . So it seems like we might have to rethink time, not as linear but something else entirely. To have the right time can mean the difference between death and life. The people who missed the Titanic only survived because they were late.
What brings events together correctly? The ancient Greeks believed it was a series of goddesses, the Moirai or fates. Destiny, possibly chance, or the laws of nature which in some ways conspire to make certain things happen. The timing is dependent on not only physics but also human nature. What we are is what our parents made us in part. When we were born, how we were born, and who our parents were will all make us in one way or another. So it is that timing is everything in a sense. Born too early and you don’t get modern medicine, born too late and you miss out on exploring the new waves. Timing is a critical piece in life.
