什么是心理模型？
心智模型是对事物如何运作的简化解释。
任何想法、信仰或概念都可以归结为其本质。就像地图一样，心智模型会突出显示关键信息，同时忽略不相关的细节。它们是将复杂性压缩为可管理块的工具。
心理模型帮助我们理解世界。例如，速度表明速度和方向都很重要。互惠揭示了如何积极主动地让世界为你做大部分工作。安全边际提醒我们，事情并不总是按计划进行。相对论暴露了我们的盲点，并展示了不同的视角如何揭示新信息。这些只是几个例子。
大学科的大创意
本页总结了重要的想法，可帮助您做出更好的决策、避免问题并发现其他人错过的机会。
通用思维工具
地图不是领土提醒我们，我们对世界的心理模型与世界本身并不相同。它警告不要将我们的抽象和表征与它们旨在描述的复杂、不断变化的现实相混淆。
将地图误认为领土是危险的。想象一下一个拥有出色简历的人，他检查了纸上的所有方框，但无法完成工作。
更新我们的地图是一个协调我们想要的真实与真实的过程的艰难过程。
在生活的许多领域，其他人都会向我们提供地图。我们依赖专家、专家和教师提供的地图。在这些情况下，我们能做的最好的事情就是明智地选择我们的地图制作者，并寻找那些严谨、透明且愿意修改的人。
最终，地图/领土的区别邀请我们接触世界的本来面目，而不仅仅是我们想象的那样。请记住，当您不制作地图时，请明智地选择制图师。
竞争的第一条规则是，如果你在有优势的地方进行比赛，你就更有可能获胜。发挥自己的优势需要对自己知道和不知道的事情有深刻的了解。
你的能力圈是你个人的专业领域，是你的知识和技能集中的地方。在这个领域，你有深刻的理解，你的判断是可靠的，你的决定是正确的。
圈子的大小并不像了解边界那么重要。明智的人知道自己知识的局限性，并且可以自信地说：“这属于我的范围”或“这超出了我的专业领域”。
虽然在你的能力范围内工作是自信和高效的秘诀，但在你的能力范围之外冒险却会带来麻烦。你就像一个水手，在没有地图的情况下在陌生的水域航行，受到你不完全理解的海流和风暴的摆布。这并不是说你永远不应该冒险走出自己的圈子。学习新事物、获得新技能、掌握新领域是生活中最美好的事情之一。
赞扬你的专业知识，但也承认你的局限性。
第一原理思维是将复杂问题分解为基本真理的艺术。这是一种超越表面的思维方式，让我们从新的角度看待事物。
基于首要原则的思考使我们能够识别根本原因，消除复杂性，并专注于最有效的解决方案。从第一原则出发的推理使我们能够跳出一贯的做事方式，转而看看什么是可能的。
第一性原理思考并不容易。它需要挑战现状的意愿。这就是为什么它经常成为反叛者和破坏者的领域，他们相信一定有更好的方法。这是那些愿意从头开始并从头开始构建的人的想法。
在一个注重渐进式改进的世界中，第一原则思维提供了竞争优势，因为几乎没有人这样做。
思想实验是心灵的沙箱，是我们可以不受限制地发挥想法的地方。它们是探索我们理论的含义、测试我们理解边界的一种方式。它们提供了一个强大的工具来澄清我们的思维，揭示隐藏的假设，并向我们展示意想不到的后果。
思想实验的力量在于它们能够创建一个简化的现实模型，我们可以在其中测试我们的想法。在现实世界中，混杂的因素和混乱的细节掩盖了工作的核心原则。思想实验使我们能够去除噪音并专注于问题的本质。
思想实验提醒我们，一些最深刻的见解和创新始于一个简单的问题：如果呢？
Second-order thinking is a method of thinking that goes beyond the surface level, beyond the knee-jerk reactions and short-term gains. It asks us to play the long game, to anticipate the ripple effects of our actions, and to make choices that will benefit us not just today but in the months and years to come.
Second-order thinking demands we ask: And then what?
Think of a chess master contemplating her next move. She doesn’t just consider how the move will affect the next turn but how it will shape the entire game. She’s thinking many steps ahead. She’s considering her own strategy and her opponent’s likely response.
In our daily lives, we’re often driven by first-order thinking. We make decisions based on what makes us happy now, what eases our current discomfort, or satisfies our immediate desires.
Second-order thinking asks us to consider the long-term implications of our choices to make decisions based not just on what feels good now but on what will lead to the best outcomes over time.
In the end, second-order thinking is about playing the long game. It’s about making choices for the next move and the entire journey.
Probabilistic thinking is the art of navigating uncertainty. Successfully thinking in shades of probability means roughly identifying what matters, calculating the odds, checking our assumptions, and then deciding.
The challenge of probabilistic thinking is that it requires constant updating. As new information emerges, the probabilities change. What seemed likely yesterday may seem unlikely today. This explains why probabilistic thinkers always revise their beliefs with new data and why it’s uncomfortable for many people.
It’s much easier to believe something false is accurate than to deal with the fact that we might be wrong. Being a probabilistic thinker means being willing to say, “I don’t know for sure, but based on the evidence, I think there’s a 63 percent chance of X.” The rewards of probabilistic thinking are immense.
By embracing uncertainty, we can make better decisions, avoid the pitfalls of overconfidence, and navigate complex situations with greater skill and flexibility. We can be more open- minded, more receptive to new ideas, and more resilient in the face of change.
Much of success comes from simply avoiding common paths to failure.
Inversion is not the way we are taught to think. We are taught to identify what we want and explore things that will move us closer to our objective. However, avoiding things that ensure we don’t get what we want dramatically increases our odds of success.
We can get fixated on solving problems one way, missing simpler solutions. Inversion breaks us out of this tunnel vision.
Instead of “How do I solve this?”, inversion asks, “What would guarantee failure?” Rather than “How can I achieve this?”, it asks “What’s preventing me from achieving it?” This flip reveals insights our usual thinking overlooks.
When facing a tricky problem or ambitious goal, try inverting. Ask how you’d guarantee failure. The answers may surprise you—and unlock new solutions.
Occam’s razor is the intellectual equivalent of “keep it simple.”
When faced with competing explanations or solutions, Occam’s razor suggests that the correct explanation is most likely the simplest one, the one that makes the fewest assumptions. This doesn’t mean the simplest theory is always true, only that it should be preferred until proven otherwise. Sometimes, the truth is complex, and the simplest explanation doesn’t account for all the facts. The key to wielding this model is understanding when it works for you and against you.
A theory that is too simple fails to capture reality, and one that is too complex collapses under its own weight.
Hanlon’s razor is a mental safeguard against the temptation to label behavior as malicious when incompetence is the most common response. It’s a reminder that people are not out to get you, and it’s best to assume good faith and resist the urge to assign sinister motives without overwhelming evidence.
This isn’t to say that genuine malice doesn’t exist. Of course, it does. But in most interactions, stupidity is a far more common explanation than malevolence. People make mistakes. They forget things. They speak without thinking. They prioritize short-term wins over long-term wins. They act on incomplete information. They fall prey to bias and prejudice. These actions might appear like deliberate attacks from the outside, but the reality is far more mundane.
Hanlon’s razor’s real power lies in how it shifts our perspective. When we assume stupidity rather than malice, we respond differently. Instead of getting defensive or lashing out, we approach the situation with empathy and clarity.
For most daily frustrations and confusion, Hanlon’s razor is a powerful reminder to approach problems with a spirit of generosity. It’s a way to reduce drama and stress and find practical solutions instead of descending into blame and escalation.
The Mental Models of Physics, Chemistry, and Biology
Relativity is the idea that our perceptions and judgments are not absolute but are shaped by our unique vantage points and frames of reference. It’s the understanding that our experiences are subjective.
We each inhabit a particular web of experiences. This context shapes how we see the world, what we notice and overlook, and what we value and dismiss. Two people can look at the same event and come away with vastly different interpretations based on their unique frames of reference.
Consider two people standing in the same room: They each experience the same absolute temperature differently. One can feel hot while the other feels cold, even though the temperature is the same. Similarly, consider political debates: Our beliefs are shaped by our unique experiences and social contexts. A policy that seems like common sense to an urban progressive might feel like complete nonsense to a rural conservative, and vice versa. In this way, understanding relativity is key to fostering empathy and finding common ground. However, relativity is not the same as relativism— the idea that all perspectives are equally valid.
Recognizing the relativity of our perceptions doesn’t mean we don’t have to make judgments about validity. Instead, it’s a call to examine our assumptions, seek out diverse perspectives, and expand our frames of reference. We all have blind spots—things we cannot see. Understanding that our perceptions are relative allows us to open ourselves to other ways of seeing. If you’re wondering where to get started, try asking others what they see that you can’t. Apply your judgment to their responses and update your beliefs accordingly.
Reciprocity underlies everything from basic human kindness to the most complex systems of trade. At its core, reciprocity is the simple idea of treating others as they treat us—giving what we get. But from this simple principle grows a vast web of social interactions and expectations that shapes nearly every aspect of our lives.
Many people expect the world to just hand them things without effort. This is a poor strategy because it doesn’t align with the human behavior you can observe around you every day. Reciprocation teaches us that you are likely to receive the same if you give people cynicism and curtness or nothing at all. But if you give people an opportunity and the benefit of the doubt, you will, more often than not, be on the receiving end of the same behavior.
Become what you want to see in the world, and the world will return it to you. If you want an amazing relationship with your partner, be an amazing partner. If you want people to be thoughtful and kind to you, be thoughtful and kind to them. If you want people to listen to you, listen to them.
The best way to achieve success is to deserve success. Small changes in your actions change your entire world.
One of the biggest misperceptions about reciprocity is that people should sit around waiting for others to go first rather than unlocking the power of reciprocity in their favor by going positive and going first without expectation.
Reciprocity reminds us that our actions tend to come back on us. It’s an essential reminder that we are part of the world, and thus, our actions do not happen in isolation but are instead part of an interconnected web of effects.
Thermodynamics
Thermodynamics is the science of energy, heat, and work. It’s the set of physical laws that govern how energy moves and changes in the universe. Chances are, when you first came across the subject, it was dry, full of equations and abstract concepts. But the truth is thermodynamics is a useful intellectual framework for daily life. Not only can it reveal why your room gets messier over time, but it also explains why you should choose your friends wisely.
The first law of thermodynamics states that energy can neither be created nor destroyed, only transformed from one form to another. This means that every joule of energy in the universe, every bit of heat and work and motion is part of an unbroken chain stretching back to the Big Bang.
When you hop on a flight that burns jet fuel, you’re tapping into energy captured by plants millions of years ago and stored in chemical bonds until it was transformed into heat and motion.
But while energy is conserved, it’s not always useful. That’s where the second law of thermodynamics comes in. It states that entropy— a measure of disorder— increases over time in any closed system. In other words, left on its own, the universe tends toward chaos. Your bedroom doesn’t clean itself— it takes energy and effort to maintain order. Stars burn out, structures crumble, and ice melts into water.
Entropy is the universe’s tax on time. The constant battle against entropy is the driving force behind much of what we do. The constant struggle between order and disorder is the source of change and progress.
While engineers and scientists use thermodynamics to design engines or calculate the energy requirements of a system, we can use it as a framework for understanding the deep interconnectedness of everything. When you feel the sun’s warmth on your skin, you’re experiencing the result of a thermodynamic process that began in the heart of a star ninety-three million miles away. When you watch a campfire burn down to embers, you’re witnessing the inexorable march of entropy in real-time.
Thermodynamics is the story of energy across time. We’re part of an energy story that stretches back to the dawn of time and reaches the farthest pockets of space. We can marvel that in a universe ruled by disorder, pockets of temporary order can emerge, whether it’s a clean room, a planet, or a civilization.
By understanding thermodynamics, we gain not just a technical toolbox but an appreciation for the beauty, complexity, and fragility of our very existence.
Inertia
Inertia is the stubborn resistance of the universe to change. It’s why objects at rest tend to stay at rest, and objects in motion tend to stay in motion. You can think of inertia as the guardian of the status quo.
At its core, inertia is a property of mass. The more massive an object is, the more it resists changes to its state of motion. A feather, with its tiny mass, is easily blown about by the slightest breeze. A boulder, on the other hand, requires a powerful force to get it moving. This is why it takes more effort to push a heavy cart than a light one, more energy to launch a rocket than to toss a ball.
But inertia isn’t just a physical phenomenon. It’s an illuminating lens to see habits, beliefs, and our resistance to change. The longer we’ve held them, the larger the mass and the more force required to change them. The path of least resistance is always the status quo.
Getting started is the hardest part. Once something moves in a direction, keeping it in motion is much easier. But once something is in motion, it’s hard to stop. This is why most self-help books about positive habits break things down into very small steps—to reduce the force required to overcome the status quo. For example, if you want to get in the habit of doing push-ups daily, start with one rather than fifty. If you want to start a flossing habit, start with one tooth. After all, the bigger the mass—in this case, the gap between where you are and where you want to be— the more effort required.
Inertia is both a challenge and an opportunity. Successful companies struggle with the inertia of their success and the resistance to change that comes with size, complexity, and entrenched interests. On the other hand, startups can leverage their lack of inertia—their agility, their willingness to pivot and adapt—as a competitive advantage.
Momentum and inertia are closely related. While inertia is the tendency to resist change, momentum is the oomph an object has when it’s moving. The more momentum something has, the harder it is to stop or redirect. The key is to pick the right direction and build momentum so inertia works to your advantage and carries you forward. This is the essence of the “flywheel” concept in business—success breeds success, and small wins compound into big gains.
When you’re fighting the status quo, remember the physics at play. Resistance is natural. Understand that building momentum in a new direction takes a sustained force. While the universe resists change, it always rewards those who dare to overcome that resistance.
Friction and Viscosity
Friction and viscosity are the sand in the gears of the universe, the invisible hands that slow the motion of all things.
Friction is the grip between surfaces in contact, the roughness that resists sliding. Viscosity is the thickness of fluids, the internal friction that makes liquids sluggish and syrupy. Together, they are the great moderators of motion.
Think of the last time you tried to slide a heavy piece of furniture across the floor. The resistance you felt, the effort required to overcome the grip of the surface— that was friction at work. Or consider the slow, thick pour of honey from a jar, the way it clings and drips in slow threads. That’s the viscosity of the fluid resisting the force of gravity, the internal friction that makes the honey flow like molasses rather than water.
While friction is the enemy of efficiency, it’s also necessary for traction. We couldn’t walk, hold tools, or tie knots without it. Viscosity, too, is a double-edged sword. In pipelines and hydraulic systems, high viscosity means higher pumping costs, slower flows, and greater strain on equipment. But viscosity also makes oil a good lubricant, allowing paints and coatings to spread evenly and adhere to surfaces.
Friction and viscosity are powerful metaphors for the forces of resistance in every domain of life. In human relationships, friction is the conflict and tension that arises from differing goals, personalities, or beliefs. The interpersonal roughness can generate heat and wear, but also the traction that allows us to influence and connect with others.
While often hidden, friction and viscosity work against us whenever we try to do something. We often default to using more force to overcome resistance when simply reducing the friction or viscosity will do. However, doing both is more effective than either in isolation.
Friction and viscosity can also be wielded as weapons. Rather than try to catch up to the competition with more effort, you might want to explore slowing them down by adding resistance through increased regulation, bureaucracy, or other clever ideas. In the end, reducing resistance is often easier than adding force.
Velocity is the great differentiator, distinguishing the stagnant from the swift.
In physics, velocity is a fundamental quantity, a key variable in the equations that describe the behavior of everything from subatomic particles to galaxies. It’s the v in the formulas of motion, the arrow that points the way from here to there.
Velocity is also a metaphor for life. Consider it the rate at which we learn and grow, the speed at which we innovate and create, and the focus with which we pursue our goals.
Velocity challenges us to think about what we can do to put ourselves on the right trajectory and to find a balance between mass and speed to move toward our goals. The ability to set a direction, improve your tactics, and adjust to new information becomes paramount.
Velocity isn’t just about raw speed. Direction matters just as much (if not more). A car moving at high speed in circles goes nowhere, while a slow and steady walk in a straight line can cross continents.
Velocity is progress. Sometimes, progress comes from more force, and sometimes, progress comes from removing friction. Once you have a destination, you can improve your velocity by working harder and eliminating things that aren’t contributing toward reaching that goal.
Leverage is the force multiplier of the world, the principle that allows the small to move the large and the few to influence the many. It’s the idea that a small amount of strategically applied input can yield outsize outputs.
At its core, leverage is about the amplification of effort. Think of a crowbar prying open a stubborn lid or a pulley system hoisting a heavy load. In each case, the tool or mechanism allows users to exert a force that multiplies their natural strength and capacity.
However, leverage isn’t just useful in physics. Instead, it’s a principle that applies across our lives.
Leverage often lurks in the background of nonlinear outcomes. Consider the author who took the ideas in their head, put them in a book, and sold millions of copies, or the Wall Street investor who made a single decision that resulted in billions. Or even the CEO who directs the people working for them.
In personal development, leverage is about identifying the essential habits, skills, and relationships that will significantly impact your life and work. It’s about focusing your energy on the critical few rather than the trivial many, about finding the points of maximum leverage where small changes can cascade into massive results.
An example of personal leverage is an employee who learns to use AI to amplify their impact on the organization far beyond their experience or effort. While labor is still a form of leverage, it can often be done with semiconductors. In this sense, the person who can leverage technology can compete in a way never imaginable.
However, leverage is not without its risks and responsibilities. Just as a small action can have an outsized positive impact, so can it have negative consequences. If you borrow too much money against your house and it turns out to be less valuable than assumed or interest rates change, the amplifying effect of leverage can quickly wipe you out.
Good ideas taken too far often cause unanticipated consequences. Wielding leverage to maximum effect all the time, as the West Virginia mine owners did, sows the seeds of ongoing unrest that undermines one’s ability to be truly effective. No one wants to feel exploited, and those who are never give their loyalty or their best work.
The key is to use leverage wisely and judiciously by understanding the systems you want to influence and considering the potential second-and subsequent-order effects of your actions. Leverage is a tool, not a toy; like any tool, it requires skill, judgment, and respect.
Activation energy is the spark that ignites the fire of change, the initial burst of effort required to kick- start a reaction or transformation. It’s the metaphorical push that gets the boulder rolling down the hill, the investment of energy needed to overcome inertia and set a process in motion.
In chemistry, activation energy is the minimum energy that must be input for a reaction. It’s the hurdle molecules must overcome to break their bonds and form new ones, the energetic barrier separating the reactants from the products.
But activation energy isn’t just a chemical concept. It’s a principle that applies to any system where change is possible but not automatic. In personal growth, activation energy is the effort required to break old habits and form new ones. In innovation, it’s the investment needed to turn an idea into reality.
The key is recognizing activation energy for what it is: a necessary upfront cost, not a permanent obstacle. Once things are moving, momentum takes over. Once the reaction starts, it becomes self- sustaining.
Catalysts
Catalysts are the unsung heroes of chemical reactions, the silent partners accelerating change. By decreasing the time required to cause change, they also make reactions possible that might not have occurred otherwise.
In chemistry, a catalyst is a substance that increases the reaction rate without permanently altering itself. But catalysts aren’t just chemical curiosities, they’re a powerful metaphor for the forces that drive change and growth.
In business, a catalyst might be a new technology that opens fresh possibilities or a visionary leader who inspires a team to new heights. In your personal life, a catalyst could be a life-changing book, a transformative experience, or a mentor who sees your potential and helps you realize it.
Of course, while we benefit from others acting as our catalysts, we can be catalysts ourselves—helping others find the activation energy they need to thrive.
Alloying
Alloying is the art of mixing elements to create something greater than the sum of its parts. While our intuition tells us that pure substances are best, alloying shows this is not always true. One plus one can equal ten.
By blending ingredients in precise proportions, metallurgists can create materials with bespoke properties—the lightness of aluminum with the strength of steel, the corrosion resistance of chromium with the affordability of iron.
But alloying isn’t just about physical properties. It’s a metaphor for the power of diversity and combination in all walks of life. In teams, alloying is the mixing of different skills, perspectives, and personalities to create a more creative, adaptable, and resilient group than any individual could be alone. In ideas, it’s the blending of concepts from different fields to spark innovation and insight. In people, alloying is the combination of skills that makes them unstoppable. Consider a person possessing deep engineering skills who can clearly explain ideas. Surely they are more valuable than someone with just the engineering skills. Now add empathy, humility, resilience, and drive. This person becomes incredibly rare. And rare is valuable.
The key to successful alloying is knowing which elements to combine and in what proportions. Too little of one ingredient and you don’t get the desired effect; too much and you might end up with something brittle or unstable. The art lies in finding the sweet spot, the golden ratio where the whole becomes more than the sum of its parts.
Evolution Part One: Natural Selection and Extinction
Natural selection is the hidden hand that selects the fittest from a never-ending pile of genetic variation, while extinction is the hammer that shatters the unfit and clears the way for variations to arise.
In biology, natural selection is the process by which traits that enhance survival and reproduction become more common in successive generations of a population. The invisible hand of natural selection guides the adaptations of the living world, favoring creatures that are best suited to their environments and pruning back those that fall short.
But for every winner in the great game of natural selection, there are countless losers. Extinction is the fate awaiting those species that fail to adapt, that find themselves outpaced by changing circumstances or outcompeted by more successful forms. The evolutionary end. Without the possibility of extinction, there would be no imperative to evolve to our changing environment. And without the sculpting hand of natural selection, the unfit and ill- adapted would consume scarce resources. These principles apply far beyond the realm of biology.
In business, technology, and ideas, we see the same relentless winnowing of the unfit and the elevation of the adaptive. The companies that thrive navigate the shifting landscape of consumer demand and technological change, while those that stagnate are swept away by the tides of creative destruction.
On a personal level, we are all subject to the pressures of selection and the risk of extinction. Our skills, our knowledge, and our ways of thinking must constantly evolve to keep pace with an ever-changing world. Those who consistently adapt are the ones who thrive in the long run.
Above all, remember that there are no permanent victories in the great game of life— only the ceaseless striving to stay one step ahead.
Evolution Part Two: Adaptation and The Red Queen Effect
Complacency will kill you. There’s no such thing as a permanent lead. No matter how well a species adapts to its environment, it must keep running just to stay in place.
The Red Queen effect results from the never-ending arms race between predator and prey, parasite and host, and competitor and competitor. As one species evolves a new adaptation, others evolve countermeasures, leading to a constant escalation. The faster you adapt, the faster your rivals must respond, and vice versa. This has profound implications for the pace of evolution.
In a static environment, natural selection might favor a leisurely pace of change. But in a world of constant change, where your competitors are always nipping at your heels, the premium is on speed. The species that thrive adapt quickly and turn the evolutionary crank faster than their rivals. But the Red Queen effect isn’t just about biological evolution. The same principle applies in any competitive domain— business, technology, or even ideas.
Companies must continually innovate to stay ahead of their rivals. Technologies must evolve at a breakneck pace to avoid obsolescence. Ideas must adapt and grow to maintain their relevance.
The key is recognizing that adaptation isn’t a one-time event but a continuous process. It’s not about reaching a finish line but maintaining a lead in an endless race. Those who rest on their laurels, who become complacent in their success, are quickly overtaken by hungrier, more agile competitors. But there is a catch when it comes to people.
Once we gain an advantage, we want to hold on to it at all costs, and if we’re not careful, this can slow the pace of adaptation. Before long, our competitors catch up or find innovative ways to neutralize our strength. Sustained success comes from being flexible enough to change, letting go of what worked in the past, and focusing on what you need to thrive in the future.
Standing still is the quickest path to extinction in a world of constant change. Victory goes to those who can continuously adapt.
Ecosystems
Nothing exists in isolation. Everything is connected. The ecosystem lens reveals that each species plays its part in a delicate balance of competition and cooperation. The actions of any one species can have consequences for many others in the same environment.
In biology, an ecosystem is a community of living organisms interacting with each other and their physical environment. In an ecosystem, nothing exists in isolation—every creature is both predator and prey, both producer and consumer, locked in an intricate dance of energy and nutrients.
Yet the concept of an ecosystem extends far beyond biology. You can see it nearly everywhere you look. Businesses operate within a complex network of companies, customers, competitors, suppliers, and regulators. Each entity relies on and influences the others, creating a dynamic interplay that determines which businesses thrive and which do not. Economies are also vast ecosystems comprising various sectors (like agriculture, manufacturing, and services) and actors (like workers, consumers, and governments). These components interact under the rules set by economic policies and market forces. Economic theories often explore how changes in one part of the ecosystem can lead to significant outcomes in another, much like the ripple effects seen in biological ecosystems.
What all ecosystems have in common is their inherent complexity and their reductionist analysis. In an ecosystem, the whole is always more than the sum of its parts. The system’s behavior emerges from the countless interactions of its components, often in surprising and unpredictable ways. This suggests that to truly comprehend a complex system, we must look beyond the individual elements and consider the patterns of relationship and feedback that bind them together.
Left to their own devices, many systems can take care of themselves, possessing abilities to correct and compensate for changes and external pressures. No matter how well-intentioned our interventions are, they often lead to unintended consequences as the solution to one problem quickly causes another, more significant problem.
Be slow to intervene, and if you do, take the time to understand how actions in one part cascade into others. It pays to remember the motto of physicians, “First, do no harm.”
Niches
A niche is a special place where a particular species or idea can thrive. It’s the ecological equivalent of a custom-fitted suit tailored to its occupant’s unique needs and abilities. In a niche, you don’t have to be all things to all people— you just have to be the best at what you do.
In biology, a niche is a species’ specific role and position within its ecosystem. It’s the unique combination of resources it consumes, the habitat it lives in, the interactions it has with other species. A place where a species’ adaptations flourish.
But the concept of a niche extends far beyond the realm of ecology. In business, we talk about “market niches”— the specific segments of customers with particular needs or preferences. A company focusing on a niche can often out-compete larger, more general rivals by specializing, by becoming the best at serving that particular slice of the market, or by moving with velocity.
The same principle applies to careers. By specializing in something unique and valuable, you can create a space where you can excel and your combination of skills thrives. The key is finding the niche that fits you, rewards your strengths, and neutralizes your weaknesses.
This isn’t to say that occupying a niche is without risks. In fact, you become very fragile. If the environment changes, if consumer preferences shift, a once-cozy niche can quickly become a tight squeeze. That’s why successful niche occupants are often those who can adapt and evolve their niche as the world around them changes.
Specialists have less competition and stress, but only in times of stability. Generalists face more significant day‑to‑day challenges for resources and survival but have more flexibility to respond when times change.
Self-Preservation
Self- preservation is a core instinct that drives all living things to protect and sustain their own existence. It’s the biological imperative that makes a gazelle run from the lion, the roots of a tree seek water, and bacteria evolve resistance to antibiotics. In the game of life, self- preservation is the only rule: stay alive.
For humans, self- preservation goes beyond physical survival. It encompasses the protection of our psychological well-being, social status, and sense of identity. Anything that threatens how we see ourselves becomes a threat.
While self- preservation is a necessary instinct, it can also be limiting. When we’re too focused on avoiding threats, we can easily miss opportunities right before us. Left unchecked, self-preservation can lead to stagnation. The key is to find balance: to protect what’s essential and be willing to let go of what no longer serves us.
Listen to the voice that tells you when to be cautious, but don’t let it be the only voice you hear. Often, the most significant risk is not taking risks at all.
Replication
Replication is the molecular magic trick that allows organisms to make copies of themselves to pass their genetic blueprints from one generation to the next. In the grand ballet of evolution, replication is the music that keeps the dance going.
At its core, replication is about information transfer. It’s the process by which the instructions encoded in DNA are faithfully copied and transmitted. Whenever a cell divides or an organism reproduces, the replication machinery swings into action, ensuring the genetic message is preserved and propagated. However, replication is not a perfect process. Errors creep in, and mutations occur. And it’s these imperfections that fuel the engine of evolution. Without the variation introduced by replication errors, life would stagnate, unable to adapt to changing environments.
Replication is helpful outside of biology, too. As a mental model, it teaches us that we don’t always need to reinvent the wheel. When you’re just starting, the quickest way to make great leaps is to imitate what others are already doing. This establishes an average baseline of performance. Once you get a sense and a feel for the environment, you can innovate and adapt to set a new baseline.
The power of replication lies in its exponential nature. A single replicated entity can give rise to countless copies, each of which can replicate further. This is the power that viruses and viral ideas harness— the ability to spread explosively by exploiting the machinery of replication. Memes, beliefs, and practices also replicate, spreading from mind to mind and shaping the contours of our shared reality.
But replication also comes with risks. Unchecked replication can be cancerous, leading to uncontrolled growth that threatens the health of the larger system.
Effective replication requires enough structure and space to produce a copy and enough flexibility to adapt to environmental changes. Just because something has worked for a while doesn’t mean it will be effective in perpetuity. Maintaining a successful approach requires the ability to grow and modify that approach as required.
As we contemplate replication’s role in life and thought, we must recognize its creative and destructive potential. We must create conditions that favor replicating what is true, sound, and beneficial while resisting the spread of what is false, harmful, or malignant.
Cooperation
Cooperation is the surprising secret of success in the ruthless world of survival. If there is any one model that explains humanity, then this is it. Cooperation unleashed the potential of the human species.
At first glance, cooperation seems to defy the logic of natural selection. Why would an organism invest its hard- earned resources in helping another rather than focusing solely on its own survival and reproduction? The answer lies in the magic of reciprocity and shared interest. When organisms can benefit more by cooperating than by competing, cooperative strategies emerge and flourish. Collaboration with others gives us options and opportunities that are unavailable when we insist on going it alone.
But cooperation is not automatic. It requires specific conditions—repeated interactions, shared benefits, and mechanisms to prevent cheating.
Cooperation is the foundation of civilization. Our species’ success is built on our ability to cooperate flexibly and at scale— to share knowledge, coordinate efforts, and create institutions that incentivize cooperative behavior. Cooperation underlies our achievements, from the division of labor in the economy to the norms of reciprocity in society. But, as in nature, human cooperation is not guaranteed. It requires constant cultivation and protection from the forces of selfishness and short- term thinking. It requires norms that reward cooperation and punish defection.
Hierarchical Organization
Hierarchy is the invisible scaffolding that organizes the living world.
Hierarchies in biology aren’t just about structure but about function. They allow for specialization and division of labor, for the emergence of complex behaviors from simple rules. In the hierarchy of an ant colony, the queen, workers, and soldiers all play their roles, their interactions giving rise to the sophisticated operation of the colony as a whole.
But hierarchy isn’t rigid or fixed. It’s fluid and dynamic, with levels constantly interacting and influencing one another. A change at one level can ripple across the entire hierarchy, transforming the system unexpectedly.
While hierarchy is a way to manage complexity, it can also backfire. Too much hierarchy leads to unrest and instability. Too little leads to chaos.
Most organizations promote cultures that emphasize rather than de‑emphasize an individual’s status, power, and place, which is part of the reason they get torn apart, as the fight to get to the top of the hierarchy takes precedence over the organization’s success.
In the end, hierarchy is the organizing principle that allows scale from the microscopic to the magnificent.
Incentives are the hidden engines that drive behavior. They’re the unseen forces that shape our choices, the carrots and sticks that guide our actions.
Think of a business offering a bonus for hitting a sales target. The bonus is an incentive, the external reward that motivates the salesperson to excel. But incentives aren’t always so obvious. They can be subtle, even subconscious— the social approval we seek, the habits we form, the desires we pursue.
Incentives are powerful because they tap into the fundamental wiring of the human brain. We’re hardwired to seek reward and avoid punishment, to optimize for the outcomes that serve our interests. When the incentives align with our goals, we thrive. When they don’t, we struggle.
In a classroom, it’s easy to say that we’ll be motivated by doing the right thing; however, in reality, we’re driven mainly by rewards. We have difficulty turning down the pleasure of immediate gains, even if it takes us away from our ultimate goal.
Often, short-term and long-term incentives differ. You might not feel like going to the gym today but want to be healthy as you age. Making choices to maximize your satisfaction today often leads to less reward down the road.
Poorly designed incentives backfire, encouraging short- term thinking, unethical behavior, or unintended consequences. The key is to craft incentives that reward the behaviors that lead to long- term success.
Ultimately, if you understand the incentive, you can predict the outcome. By shaping the incentives, we shape the outcomes. By aligning the incentives, we unlock the power of human potential.
Tendency to Minimize Energy Output (Mental and physical)
The tendency to limit energy output is the universal inclination to follow the path of least resistance. From the flow of a river to the behavior of a market, this tendency is the invisible hand that guides the actions of the world.
Sometimes, our tendency to conserve energy helps us, and sometimes, it hurts us. While minimizing our output ensures we will have extra to draw on in times of increased need, it can also get in the way of learning. Experience doesn’t become learning without reflection, which is an energy expenditure.
If we want to develop our thinking and get the most out of our environments, then we have to be aware of the natural tendency to minimize energy output and correct for it where doing so creates value.
The Mental Models of Systems Thinking
Feedback loops are the engines of growth and change. They’re the mechanisms by which the output of a system influences its own input.
Complex systems often have many feedback loops, and it can be hard to appreciate how adjusting to feedback in one part of the system will affect the rest.
Using feedback loops as a mental model begins with noticing the feedback you give and respond to daily. The model also gives insight into the value of iterations in adjusting based on the feedback you receive. With this lens, you gain insight into where to direct system changes based on feedback and the pace you need to go to monitor the impacts.
Feedback loops are what make systems dynamic. Without feedback, a system just does the same thing over and over. Understand them, respect them, and use them wisely.
Equilibrium
Equilibrium is the state of balance, where opposing forces cancel each other out. It’s the calm in the storm’s center, the stable point around which the chaos swirls. In a system at equilibrium, there’s no net change. Everything is in a steady state, humming along at a constant pace.
However, systems are rarely static. They continuously adjust toward equilibrium but rarely stay in balance for long.
Equilibrium is a double-edged sword, both stability and stagnation. In our lives, we often act like we can reach an equilibrium: once we get into a relationship, we’ll be happy; once we move, we’ll be productive; once X thing happens, we’ll be in Y state. But things are always in flux. We don’t reach a certain steady state and then stay there forever. The endless adjustments are our lives. The trick is to find the right balance, strive for equilibrium where it’s needed, and know when to break free and embrace the dis-equilibrium that drives progress.
Bottlenecks
Bottlenecks are the choke points, the narrow parts of the hourglass where everything slows down. They’re the constraints that limit the flow, the weakest links in the chain that determine the strength of the whole. In any system, the bottleneck is the part holding everything else back.
The tricky thing about bottlenecks is that they’re not always obvious. It’s easy to focus on the parts of the system that are moving quickly and assume everything is fine. But the real leverage is in finding and fixing the bottlenecks. Speed up the slowest part, and you speed up the whole system.
This is the theory of constraints in a nutshell. Figure out your bottleneck and focus all your efforts on alleviating it. Don’t waste time optimizing the parts that are already fast. They’re not the limiting factor.
However, bottlenecks aren’t always the villains we make them out to be. Sometimes, they’re a necessary part of the system. Think of a security checkpoint at an airport. It slows everything down, but it’s there for a reason. Remove it, and you might speed things up, but at the cost of safety.
The key is to be intentional about your bottlenecks. Choose them wisely, and make sure they’re serving a purpose. A deliberate bottleneck can be a powerful tool for focusing effort and maintaining quality. An accidental bottleneck is just a drag on the system.
Bottlenecks are leverage points where a little effort can go a long way.
Scale
Systems change as they scale up or down; neither is intrinsically better or worse. The right scale depends on your goals and the context. If you want to scale something up, you need to anticipate that new problems will keep arising— problems that didn’t exist on a smaller scale. Or you might need to keep solving the same problems in different ways.
Think about a recipe. If you’re making a cake for four people, you use a certain amount of ingredients. But if you want to make a cake for four hundred people, you don’t just multiply the ingredients by one hundred. That’s not how scale works. You need to change the process and use bigger mixers and bigger ovens. You need a system that can handle the increased volume without breaking down.
The challenge with scale is that it’s not always obvious how to achieve it. What works for a small system often breaks down at larger volumes. You have to anticipate the bottlenecks and the points where the system will strain under the increased load. And you have to be ready to re‑engineer your processes as you grow.
If you’re building something, always be thinking about scale. How will this work when you have ten times as many customers? One hundred times? One thousand times? Build with scale in mind from the start, and you’ll be ready for the growth when it comes.
Margin of safety is a secret weapon. It’s the buffer, the extra capacity, the redundancy that you build into a system to handle unexpected stress. It’s the difference between a bridge that can barely handle the expected load and one that can handle ten times that load without breaking a sweat.
You can apply a margin of safety to any area of life with uncertainty and risk. The key is always to ask yourself: What if I’m wrong? What if things don’t go as planned? How much extra capacity must I build to handle the unexpected?
But here’s the rub: margin of safety isn’t free. It means spending more upfront. In the short term, you’ll look overly cautious and leave immediate profits on the table. But in the long run, this apparent overcaution lets you survive when others break – and thrive when others merely survive.
Margin of safety is the unsung hero of long-term success. It’s not flashy. It’s not exciting, but it’s the foundation on which everything else is built. Master it, and you’ll be well on your way to navigating the uncertainties of life with confidence and stability.
Churn
Churn is the silent killer of businesses. It’s the slow leak, the constant drip of customers slipping away, of users drifting off to find something new. The attrition eats away at your growth, forcing you to keep running just to stay in place. The thing about churn is that it’s often hidden. It’s not like a sudden crisis that grabs your attention. It’s a slow, quiet process that happens in the background.
Churn can present opportunity. Like a snake shedding its skin, replacing components of a system is a natural part of keeping it healthy. New parts can improve functionality.
When we use this model as a lens, we see that new people bring new ideas, and counterintuitively, some turnover allows us to maintain stability. Replacing what is worn out also allows us to upgrade and expand our capabilities, creating new opportunities. Some churn is inevitable. Too much can kill you.
Algorithms
Algorithms are recipes. A list of crisp, unambiguous steps that tell you how to get from point A to point B. But they’re more than just directions. Algorithms are if‑then machines for tuning out the noise and zeroing in on the signal. Have the specs been met? Fol- low the algorithm and find out. Thinking algorithmically means searching for processes that reliably spit out the desired results, like a vending machine dispensing the same candy bar every time someone punches in E4.
Critical mass
Critical mass isn’t just a science term; it’s a guide for understanding that often things happen slowly and then all at once. It’s the moment when a system goes from sputtering along to explosive growth. Like a nuclear chain reaction, once you hit critical mass, the reaction becomes self-sustaining.
Through this lens we gain insight into the amount of material needed for a system to change from one state to another. Material can be anything from people and effort to raw material. When enough material builds up, systems reach their tipping point. When we keep going, we get sustainable change.
Using critical mass as a lens for situations where you want different outcomes helps you identify both the design elements you need to change and the work you need to put in.
Emergence
Nearly everything is an emergent effect—a table, a space shuttle, even us— combinations of ingredients that come together in a specific way to create something new. Emergence is the universe’s way of reminding us that when we combine different pieces in new ways, we get results that are more than the sum of their parts, often in the most unexpected and thrilling ways.
Using this mental model is not about predicting emergent properties but acknowledging they are possible. There is no need to stick with what you know; mix it up and see what happens. Learn new skills, interact with new people, read new things.
Irreducibility
Irreducibility is about essence. It’s the idea that some things can’t be broken down into smaller parts without losing what makes them tick. It’s the idea that not everything can be explained by looking at its components. Emergent properties arise from complex systems that can’t be predicted by studying the individual parts.
Grappling with irreducibility requires a shift in thinking. Instead of trying to break things down, sometimes you have to zoom out. Look at the big picture. Embrace the complexity. Because some problems don’t have neat, modular solutions. They’re irreducibly messy.
Using irreducibility as a lens helps you focus on what you can change by understanding what really matters
Law of Diminishing Returns
Diminishing returns is the idea that the easy wins usually come first. The more you optimize a system, the harder it gets to eke out additional improvements, like squeezing juice from a lemon. The first squeeze is easy. The second takes a bit more work. By the tenth squeeze, you’re fighting for every last drop.
Every bit of effort translates into significant gains when you’re a beginner. But as you level up, progress becomes more incremental. It takes more and more work to get better and better. That’s why going from good to great is much harder than going from bad to good.
Understanding diminishing returns is crucial for allocating resources efficiently. You want to focus on where you can get the biggest bang for your buck. Sometimes, that means knowing when to stop optimizing and move on to something else.
The Mental Models of Mathematics
Sampling
Sample size is about how much of the world you’re looking at. It’s the number of data points you’re using to draw conclusions. Like trying to guess the average height of people in a city by measuring a few folks on the street. The more people you measure, the more confident you can estimate.
One of the biggest mistakes we can make is drawing conclusions from too small a sample size— like trying to guess a puzzle picture from only a few pieces. In most instances, increasing our sample size gives us valuable information that lets us see our situation in a new light. The catch is that large sample sizes are expensive. It takes time and money to collect all that data. So practitioners and researchers are always balancing the need for precision with the constraints of budget and deadline. They’ll often settle for the smallest sample size that can still give them a statistically significant result.
Using this model means exploring what isn’t obvious and knowing how easy it is to corrupt our samples with bias.
The next time you hear a statistic, think about the sample size. It’ll give you a clue about how seriously to take it. Remember: the larger the sample, the closer to the truth.
Randomness
Randomness is the chaos that underlies the cosmos. It’s the unpredictable, the uncontrollable, the stuff that doesn’t follow any discernible pattern.
Randomness is what makes life surprising. It’s why you can’t predict the future with certainty. You might make plans, but there’s always the possibility of a random event throwing a wrench in the works. A flat tire, a chance encounter, a sudden inspiration. Randomness is the spice that keeps things interesting.
The tricky thing about randomness is that humans are terrible at recognizing it. We see patterns where there are none. We attribute meaning to coincidence. We think we can beat the odds. But true randomness is immune to our predictions and superstitions. It doesn’t care about our theories or desires
Regression To The Mean
Regression to the mean is the universe’s way of saying “not so fast.” It’s the tendency for extreme outcomes to be followed by more average ones. Extreme results are rarely repeated.
The next time you see something extraordinary, enjoy it. But remember, it probably won’t last. Sooner or later, regression to the mean will come calling, pulling the exceptional back to the ordinary. That’s the way the universe keeps things in check.
Multiply by Zero
Multiplying by zero is the mathematical version of the Midas touch in reverse. Everything it touches turns to nothing. No matter how big or small a number is, when you multiply it by zero, you get zero. It’s the ultimate reset button.
Multiplying by zero shows that we must be mindful of the zeros that will negate our other efforts. Just as in engineering, where one faulty component can make an entire system fail, not being reliable can have the same effect in life.
When you multiply by zero, everything else becomes irrelevant.
Equivalence
Equivalence is the art of making things interchangeable. It’s the idea that two things can be swapped out without changing the essence of what they’re a part of. Like swapping a red Lego brick for a blue one. The color changes, but the structure remains the same.
Being equal doesn’t mean being the same. Different inputs can produce identical results, and there is more than one way to solve most problems.
Equivalence lets us simplify complex systems. We can focus on the essentials instead of getting bogged down in details. We can see the forest for the trees. And we can make changes without fear of breaking the fundamental structure.
Of course, equivalence has its limits. Not everything is interchangeable. You can’t swap out a car’s engine for a hamster wheel and expect the car to run. The art is in knowing where equivalence applies and where it doesn’t. It’s in recognizing the essential differences that matter, and the superficial differences that don’t.
The next time you face a complex problem, try thinking about equivalence. Look for the underlying patterns. See if there are components you can swap out or simplify. You might just find a solution that’s been hiding in plain sight all along.
Surface Area
Surface area is what determines how much an object interacts with its environment. The more surface area the more contact. Surface area can be good and bad. Sometimes, keeping it small is favorable, and sometimes, increasing our exposure is beneficial.
Surface area teaches us that increasing cognitive diversity can give us fresh ideas and help us innovate. However, the model also reminds us that in many ways, the more we expose ourselves, the more vulnerable we are. Different situations require different surface areas.
Global and Local Maxima
Global and local maxima as a model can be used differently to help us make the changes we need for success. It encourages us to see achieving our goals not as a steady upward trajectory but as a path full of peaks and valleys. Understanding that sometimes we have to go down to climb even higher helps us make short-term sacrifices to play the long game. In engineering, you might be trying to maximize efficiency. In life, you might be trying to maximize happiness. But in all these cases, getting stuck on a local maximum is easy. You find a pretty good solution, and you stop looking for a better one.
The next time you’re trying to optimize something, remember the concept of global and local maxima. Don’t just settle for the first peak you find. Keep exploring. Keep searching for that global maximum. It might be a tough climb, but the view from the top is worth it.
The Mental Models of Economics
Scarcity
Scarcity shapes our choices and drives our actions. When something is scarce, it suddenly becomes valuable. We want it more because there is less. It’s the principle that underlies everything from the price of gold to the thrill of the hunt.
Scarcity isn’t just about material things. It applies to time, opportunities, and ideas. We’re drawn to the exclusive, the limited-edition, the one-of-a-kind.
In economics, scarcity is a foundational principle. There are infinite wants and desires but limited resources. We can’t have everything, so we must choose. Scarcity guides those choices.
Some businesses operate with a scarcity mentality, removing shock absorbers and operating lean, with just enough resources to produce the day’s goods. This model is prone to disruption with the slightest hiccup and signals to employees that they’re in a culture of scarcity, triggering our biological instinct toward self-preservation. We subconsciously hoard things of value to gain an individual advantage.
Scarcity can work to your advantage. Imagine you’ve got a rare combination of qualities: you’re honest, hardworking, and smart. People like that are scarce, and the world disproportionately rewards them. It’s not just about being good at one thing; it’s about having a mix of traits.
The key to navigating scarcity is understanding its power, recognizing when it’s driving our choices, and asking if those choices align with our true values and goals. Sometimes, scarcity creates real value. But sometimes, it’s just a mirage, a trick of the mind.
Supply and Demand
Supply and demand are the push and pull determining availability and price. Their dance is never-ending. A sudden shortage can send prices soaring; a new discovery can send them crashing.
But supply and demand aren’t just about price; they’re also about allocation. They determine who gets what, and how much of it. When supply is low and demand is high, resources flow to those willing and able to pay the most.
Markets react to supply and demand. When demand exceeds supply, it encourages investment by companies to create substitutes or more supply. On the other hand, when supply exceeds demand, it discourages investment until a profitable balance is restored.
Economic cycles are driven as much by human nature as by resources. When profits are flowing, it encourages overconfidence, greed, and complacency. When profits are nowhere to be found, it encourages fear, savings, and ruthless efficiency.
As individuals, we’re all part of this dance. Every choice we make as consumers and every decision we make as producers shapes the contours of supply and demand. We are the market, collectively determining what has value and what doesn’t.
Remember the forces at play the next time you’re at the store, negotiating a salary, or launching a product. You’re not just a passive participant but an active agent in supply and demand. Your choices matter. Make them wisely.
Optimization
Optimization is about making the most of what you have. It’s like cleverly solving a puzzle, finding a trick to skip steps and get to the answer faster.
In a world of scarcity, optimization is powerful. It allows us to maximize our limited resources, whether time, money, or energy. But like any tool, it’s only as good as the hand that wields it. Used wisely, optimization unlocks hidden potential and drives extraordinary results. Used poorly, it leads to wasted effort and missed opportunities.
Optimization often works for you until it doesn’t. It’s like the student who writes the answer but doesn’t show their work. Knowing when to use it, when to let it go, and when to avoid it can give you a key advantage.
Trade-offs
Life is full of trade-offs. Every choice has a cost. When you say yes to one thing, you say no to others. This is how the world works. It’s like gravity. You can’t escape it.
Opportunity cost is what you give up when you make a choice. It’s the thing you can’t have because you picked something else. Say you have a free evening. You can work on your startup or go to a movie. If you work, you miss the fun. If you go to the movie, you miss the chance to make progress.
Every choice has an opportunity cost because every time you say yes to something, you’re implicitly saying no to other things. You need to know your opportunity costs. This helps you make good trade-offs.
A trade-off is giving up one thing to get something else. It’s choosing between options. Each has good and bad points. Trade-offs are about priorities. When you make something, you face trade-offs. If you want it fast, you might lose some features. If you want it cheap, you might use lower-quality materials.
In life, we face trade- offs all the time. Do you take a high-paying job with long hours? Or the low-paying one with more free time? Do you spend money now or save for later?
Making good trade-offs is about weighing the opportunity costs and benefits of each option and choosing the one that aligns best with your goals and values. It’s not always easy, but being conscious of the trade- offs you’re making can help you make better decisions.
Wisdom is anticipating the consequences of your choices. In life and business, success is about making good trade-offs. It’s not about having it all. It’s about having what matters most. We all value different things. That’s what makes life rich.
Opportunity cost is what you give up when you make a choice; trade-offs are the balancing acts you perform when deciding between competing options. They’re two sides of the same coin— whenever you make a trade-off, you’re incurring an opportunity cost for the option you didn’t choose. The key in both cases is to be thoughtful and intentional about your choices.
Specialization
Specialization is a trade-off: pursuing one course means not pursuing another. It’s narrowing your focus to broaden your impact. In a world of infinite knowledge and finite time, specialization is the key to unlocking mastery. It’s about going deep, not wide.
Specialization has risks. If the world changes, what was once a valuable specialty can become obsolete. And yet, we need specialists. You wouldn’t want a generalist doing your brain surgery or a root canal.
Here’s the catch: the more you specialize, the more you see how much other fields can teach you. The most exciting finds often happen at the edges between areas of knowledge. The trick is to specialize without getting stuck. To go deep, but also reach out.
Ultimately, specialization is about where you spend your time and effort. It’s how you stand out. It’s choosing to be great at one thing instead of okay at many.
Interdependence
Interdependence is the web that ties us all together. It’s the recognition that no person, company, or country is an island. We’re all connected, all reliant on one another in countless ways, big and small. Interdependence is the reality that underlies the illusion of self- sufficiency. No one is entirely self- made.
Interdependence can be both a vulnerability and a strength. When we recognize our interdependencies, we can leverage them for mutual benefit. We can form alliances, partnerships, and ecosystems. We can create value that no single entity could create alone.
Interdependence is the foundation of synergy, the alchemy of the whole being greater than the sum of its parts. On the other hand, if we depend on others for something critical, it can expose us if they fail to deliver. It’s easy to be a good partner when things are going well. But you want to be careful with whom you depend in a crisis. Interdependence isn’t just a macro concept. It’s deeply personal. We’re all interdependent with our families, friends, and communities. We rely on one another for support, for love, for meaning. Interdependence is the fabric of our social lives.
Efficiency
Efficiency is about getting the most done with the least waste. It’s not always about finding the perfect answer but the one that works well enough without too much fuss. Efficiency matters because in real life, you never have all the time or resources you want. You have to make do with what you’ve got.
But efficiency isn’t just about speed. It’s also about effectiveness and doing the right things. There’s no point in doing something fast if it’s not worth doing. True efficiency is about focusing on what matters most. It’s about saying no to the small stuff so you can say yes to the big stuff.
Like everything, efficiency has its limits. There’s a point of diminishing returns, a threshold beyond which further optimization yields little gain. The key is finding the sweet spot, the point of maximum efficiency before the costs start outweighing the benefits.
Efficiency works until it doesn’t. The more perfectly efficient a system, the more vulnerable it becomes to any change. While the idea can be hard to appreciate, maximal efficiency in the short term rarely leads to maximum long- term efficiency. A common benefit eroded in the quest for efficiency is a margin of safety. Through the efficiency lens, the opportunity cost of holding something like extra cash, inventory, or even employees may be seen as too high. However, supply shocks or environmental changes can make excess cash, inventory, and employees more valuable.
Inefficiency in the short run is often very efficient in the long run when it leaves you better able to adapt to an uncertain world and increases the odds of survival.
In a world of trade-offs, efficiency is a balancing act. It’s about making the most of what you have and leaving room for what you might need. It’s about being prepared for the future, not just optimized for the present.
Debt
Debt is a double-edged sword. It’s a powerful tool to help you grow a business, buy a home, or seize an opportunity. But it’s also a chain that can bind your future or destroy you.
When debt spirals out of control, it quickly turns dreams into nightmares.
Debt isn’t just about money. It can be a favor you owe, a social obligation, or anything that creates a future obligation. We even have sleep debt.
It can be hard to appreciate just how fragile debt makes you. It’s like driving across a vast desert without a spare tire. If everything goes perfectly, you will reach the other side, but the smallest hiccup will leave you stranded and desperate.
Use debt wisely. Respect its power, but fear its edge. Remember, the more you borrow, the less room you have to weather life’s storms.
While debt might seem cheap in the moment, the future often proves it to be more expensive than we imagined. The more you borrow, the less room you have to deal with uncertainty.
Debt can give you leverage, but it can also take away your freedom. Respect its power but fear its edge.
Monopoly and Competition
Monopoly and competition are the yin and yang of the business world. They’re the opposing forces that shape the landscape of every market, the tides that lift and sink the fortunes of every firm. To understand business, you must understand the dance between these poles.
Competition is the default state of the market. It’s the Darwinian struggle where many firms vie for the same customers and resources. In a competitive market, no one firm has the power to set prices or dictate terms. They’re price takers, not price makers. They survive by being efficient, delivering value, and innovating.
If competition is the natural state, monopoly is the entrepreneur’s dream. A monopoly dominates a market so completely that it becomes the market. Think of the only bridge that crosses a river. But monopolies inevitably sow the seeds of their own destruction. The question is how long they will last.
We need both monopoly and competition. Competition keeps firms honest and drives innovation. But we also need monopolies’ deep pockets to fund big visions and moon shots. The ideal is a balance: enough competition to check monopolies but enough monopolies to reward innovation.
Creative Destruction
Creative destruction is the engine of progress in a capitalist economy. It’s the process by which new innovations replace old ones, the cycle of birth and death that keeps an economy vibrant. It embodies the old adage: The only constant is change.
In a dynamic economy, nothing is sacred. Newer, better ideas can disrupt every industry, company, and way of doing things. The smartphone replaced the flip phone, online streaming replaced movie rental stores, and cars replaced horses.
While creative destruction can be painful for individual companies, it’s essential for the overall economy’s health. It prevents stagnation and ensures resources are always put to their most productive use. Without creative destruction, we’d still ride horses and rent VHS tapes.
On one hand, creative destruction is the opportunity you’re looking for—the chance to disrupt an incumbent—to build something new and better. But on the other hand, it’s the threat you’re always guarding against—the possibility that you will be disrupted by the next big thing.
Creative destruction isn’t just about business; it’s a metaphor for life. We are all subject to change, to the constant cycle of endings and beginnings. The key is to not cling too tightly to the old, but to embrace the new possibilities.
Gresham’s Law
Gresham’s Law states that bad money drives out good. But it’s not just about currency. The principle applies anytime there are two competing versions of something, one perceived as high quality and the other as low quality.
In a sense, Gresham’s Law is the dark side of human nature. We’re wired to optimize for the short term, to get the most value for the least effort. If we can pass off the less valuable thing and keep the more valuable one, we will. Without consequences, bad behavior drives out good. Bad lending drives out good lending. Bad morals drive out good morals. Overcoming this requires constant effort.
In the short run, bad often drives out good. But in the long run, true value wins out.
Bubbles
Bubbles are a natural by-product of human nature. They happen when collective enthusiasm for an asset runs far ahead of its fundamental value. It’s the moment when the market becomes untethered from reality when prices are driven not by sober calculation but by mass delusion.
Bubbles are a fascinating study of human psychology. They’re driven by greed and FOMO (fear of missing out). No one wants to be the sucker who sits on the sidelines while everyone else gets rich. But there’s also an element of genuine belief, of conviction that this time is different, that the old rules no longer apply.
While ultimately destructive, bubbles also serve a function. They’re the market’s way of exploring new frontiers, of testing new possibilities. Many of the innovations we take for granted today— from cars to computers to the internet itself— were once the subject of speculative manias. Bubbles fund the infrastructure for future revolutions, even as they leave a trail of financial wreckage in their wake.
Bubbles remind us that markets are driven by human emotions and beliefs. They’re a mirror held up to our collective hopes, dreams, and delusions. The next time you catch yourself saying, “this time is different,” remember that all bubbles pop eventually.
Like a balloon that can only expand so far, bubbles eventually burst, and the game ends abruptly without warning. Keeping yourself grounded in value and economic reality, not in story or hype, is key to standing alone as a bubble expands.
The Mental Models of Art
Audience
The audience is the invisible participant in every work of art. They are the eyes that see, the ears that hear, the minds that interpret. Without an audience, art is like a tree falling in an empty forest— it may make a sound, but does it really matter? The audience is what gives art its meaning, its purpose, and its very existence.
But the audience is not passive. They bring their own experiences, their own perspectives, and their own biases to the encounter. A painting of a sunset may evoke feelings of peace and beauty for one person and feelings of melancholy and loss for another. The artwork is the same, but the audience is different, so the meaning is different. In this sense, the audience is a cocreator of the art.
This is why great artists are often obsessed with their audience. They aren’t just creating for themselves— they are creating for the imagined eyes and minds that will encounter their work. They are trying to anticipate reactions, provoke thoughts, and shape experiences. The audience is their silent collaborator and their ultimate judge.
But here’s the paradox: the more an artist focuses on the audience, the more they risk losing their authentic voice. If you constantly try to anticipate what people will like, you create something bland and generic. The true artist must walk a tightrope— respecting the audience but not pandering to them. Creating something that communicates and is also true to their own vision.
The audience is something real in a world where so much can be faked. You can fake likes, followers, and reviews, but you can’t fake the genuine human experience of engaging with art. The spontaneous laughter, the unexpected tears, the long, thoughtful silence—these are the honest reactions that both the audience and the artists live for.
Never forget your audience, but never let them dictate your creation. And always remember: in a world of illusions, the audience is your anchor.
Genre
Picture this: you’re browsing a bookstore, scanning the shelves for your next read. You pick up a book with a shadowy figure on the cover, a magnifying glass in hand. Instantly, you know what kind of story awaits you within those pages. This is the power of genre— the unspoken understanding between creator and audience that shapes how we experience art.
But genre is more than just a label; it’s a set of conventions, an understanding between the artist and the audience. When we pick up a mystery novel, we expect a crime, some clues, and a detective. When we go to a rock concert, we expect loud guitars, driving rhythms, and a rebellious attitude. Genre sets the parameters of our experience, even as it gives the artist a foundation to build upon or rebel against.
Think of genre as a game with rules. The rules provide structure, but they also create opportunities for creativity. A sonnet has a strict form— fourteen lines, a specific rhyme scheme— but within those constraints, poets have found endless ways to express love, loss, joy, and sorrow. The rules of the genre game inspire ingenuity, challenging artists to create something fresh within the familiar.
But genres are not static; they are constantly evolving. Look at the way rock music has transformed over the decades. What began as a rebellious offshoot of blues and country in the 1950s has splintered into countless subgenres, each with a distinct style and audience. From the psychedelic experimentation of the 1960s to the punk revolution of the ’70s to the grunge explosion of the ’90s, rock has reinvented itself time and again. What was once transgressive becomes mainstream, and new forms emerge to take its place.
Navigating genre is a delicate art. Sticking too closely to the conventions may cause your work to be dismissed as formulaic. On the other hand, if you stray too far you risk losing your audience. The key is to find the sweet spot— honoring the genre’s expectations while bringing something new and personal to the table.
Ultimately, genre is a tool—a way of framing the conversation between the artist and the audience. It provides common ground, a starting point for the journey together. But the true power of art lies in the way it can transcend genre, using convention as a springboard to take us places we’ve never been.
Contrast
Contrast is the spice of life and art. It’s the clash of opposites that energizes a work and jolts our senses. Without contrast, the world is bland. With it, the world dances with dark and light, loud and soft, rough and smooth. Contrast makes us notice.
Contrast isn’t just visual. In music, quiet moments make loud ones explosive. Gentle ballads set the stage for crashing anthems. In literature, calm before the storm makes extraordinary events remarkable. Contrast gives art emotional power.
Contrast creates interest and engagement. Our brains are wired to pay attention to changes and differences. We tune out the monotonous, but we snap to attention when something breaks the pattern. Artists use contrast to manipulate our attention, direct our focus, and shape our work experience.
Contrast is a universal principle. Light and dark, hot and cold, life and death— the world is defined by contrasts. Darkness helps us understand light. Winter makes us appreciate spring. Contrast gives meaning to existence.
Framing
Framing is the art of context, the craft of shaping perception. It’s how we present information, the lens through which we invite others to view the world. Like a photographer choosing what’s in the frame, we constantly decide what to emphasize, minimize, or leave out. These often unconscious choices profoundly influence how others understand and respond.
In psychology, framing is a key concept in understanding decision- making. Present the same options in different ways, and people’s choices change. Is it a muffin or a cake? The thing doesn’t change, but its packaging does.
For marketers and advertisers, framing is a potent tool. A car can be framed as a status symbol, an adventure machine, or a sensible family vehicle. A watch can be about punctuality, or it can be about luxury and prestige. The product stays the same, but the story changes. The right frame makes the ordinary extraordinary.
But framing isn’t just about persuasion. It’s also about understanding, about making sense of the complex world around us. We all carry frames in our minds— mental models of how things work, cultural narratives, and personal beliefs. These frames shape how we interpret information, how we explain events, and how we imagine possibilities.
Framing’s power lies in its subtlety. Unlike a logical argument, a frame doesn’t need to be explicitly stated to have an effect. It works on an emotional, often subconscious level. A well-crafted frame can make an idea feel intuitive, even inevitable, without the audience knowing why.
Framing is the silent partner in every communication, the hidden hand shaping understanding. Like any powerful tool, framing can be used for good or ill. It can illuminate truth, or it can obscure it. It can empower people to see new possibilities, or it can subtly limit their thinking to narrow predefined channels.
Rhythm
Rhythm is the universe’s heartbeat, the pulse animating life. From our steady heartbeats to the sun’s rise and fall, from crashing waves to swaying trees, rhythm is the pattern underlying existence. It’s the organizing principle bringing order to chaos, the recurring cycle shaping time.
In music, rhythm is the backbone supporting melody and harmony. Without rhythm, music would be a formless wash of sound, lacking structure and impact. The steady beat of the drum, the driving strum of the guitar, the pulsing throb of the bass— these rhythms grab us on a visceral level, moving our bodies and stirring our souls.
But rhythm isn’t just about regularity, the even spacing of beats. It’s also variation, the interplay of different rhythmic patterns. In jazz, the syncopated rhythms and the unexpected accents give the music an improvisational feel. In classical music, the shifting rhythms, from the stately march to the lively dance, convey the piece’s emotional arc.
Rhythm is also fundamental to language. The cadence of a phrase, the meter of a poem, the rise and fall of a great orator’s speech— these rhythms communicate meaning beyond the literal content of the words. They create their own music, a pattern resonating in the ear and lingering in the mind.
Even in our daily lives, rhythm plays a crucial role. The routines we establish, the habits we cultivate, the cycles of work and rest, of activity and reflection— these rhythms give structure and meaning to our existence. Without rhythm, life would be a formless blur, a ceaseless stream of unrelated moments. Rhythm allows us to make sense of time, to find our place in life’s larger patterns.
Melody
Melody is music’s soul, the ethereal thread weaving through sound’s tapestry. It’s the part of a song that we hum in the shower, the tune that gets stuck in our head and won’t let go. Melody is the musical expression of a fundamental human need: the need to tell a story, convey an emotion, and connect with others beyond words.
A melody is simply a sequence of notes, a pattern of pitches and rhythms. But melody’s magic transcends these basic building blocks. A great melody is more than the sum of its parts. It has a shape, a contour, an arc that carries us from one note to the next. It has a sense of inevitability, as if each note is the only possible choice, even as the melody surprises us with its freshness and novelty.
In this sense, melody is a lot like language. As we arrange words infinitely to express different ideas, we arrange notes to express emotions and experiences. A rising melody might convey a sense of hope and aspiration, while a falling melody might suggest sadness or resignation. A melody with large leaps might feel adventurous and daring, while one with small, stepwise motion might feel intimate and confiding.
But melody isn’t just about individual expressions. It’s also about communication and connection. When a melody resonates with us, it’s as if the composer is speaking directly to our hearts. We feel understood, validated, less alone. And when we sing or play a melody with others, we create a bond, a shared experience that transcends our individual differences.
This is why melody has such power across cultures and throughout history. From the chants of ancient rituals to the latest pop hits, melody has been a constant in human musical expression. It’s a universal language, requiring no translation or explanation. A beautiful melody can move us regardless of whether we understand the words or know the cultural context.
Of course, not all melodies are equal. Just as there are great works of literature and forgettable pulp novels, there are melodies that stand the test of time and others that quickly fade from memory. The best melodies balance the familiar and the new. They have a memorable shape, a satisfying resolution, a feeling of completeness.
In a world often fragmented and chaotic, melody is a source of unity and coherence, a way of finding beauty and meaning amid the noise.
Representation
Representation is the mental shorthand we use to navigate the complexities of reality, the symbols and images we use to communicate our thoughts and experiences. Representation is how we construct meaning and bridge the gap between the raw data of our senses and the narratives we tell about ourselves and our world.
At its core, representation is about standing in for something else. A word stands in for an object or concept, a map for a territory, a musical note for a sound. We use representations because we can’t hold the entirety of reality in our minds at once. We need abstractions, simplifications, and models that we can manipulate and reason about.
But representation is not neutral. Every representation is an interpretation, a way of framing reality that highlights some aspects and obscures others. An emoji might represent a feeling, but it doesn’t show the lived experience that causes that feeling. In this sense, representation is always a kind of distortion. It’s a lens that shapes how we see the world, for better or worse. A good representation can illuminate hidden truths, help us see patterns and connections we might otherwise miss. But a bad representation can mislead us, reinforce stereotypes and prejudices, limit our ability to imagine alternatives.
Representation is not just about mirroring reality; it’s also about shaping it. The representations we create and consume can influence how we think and act, to change the very world they purport to describe. A powerful piece of art can shift cultural attitudes, a persuasive political narrative can sway elections, a compelling scientific model can guide research and policy. In this way, representation is a kind of feedback loop. We create representations based on our understanding of reality, but those representations, in turn, shape our understanding, which influences the representations we create next. It’s a constant dance between map and territory, symbol and referent.
Plot
The plot is the story’s engine, propelling characters and events through time. It’s the sequence of causally connected events that leads from the beginning of a narrative to its resolution. Without a plot, a story is just disconnected moments and unrelated incidents. With a plot, a story becomes a journey, a transformative experience for characters and readers.
At its most basic level, a plot is a series of events connected by cause and effect. Event A leads to Event B, which leads to Event C, and so on, until the story reaches its resolution. But a good plot is more than just a linear chain of events. It’s a complex web of actions and reactions, of conflicts and resolutions, of setups and payoffs.
Conflict is the heart of any plot. Without conflict, characters have no story or reason to act or change. Conflict can take many forms— person versus person, person versus nature, person versus society, person versus self. But all conflicts share a fundamental structure: a character wants something but faces obstacles. The plot is the events that arise from the character’s attempts to overcome these obstacles and achieve their goal.
But plot is not just about external conflicts and goals. It’s also about the internal journey of the characters, the way they grow and change because of the events they experience. A good plot presents a character with external challenges and forces them to confront their own flaws, beliefs, and desires.
In this sense, the plot is a crucible for the character. It’s the fire that tests and transforms the protagonist, revealing their true nature and potential. A character who ends a story unchanged, unaffected by the plot’s events, is a character in a story that hasn’t really gone anywhere. The best plots leave characters fundamentally altered, through triumph or tragedy.
Plot is also personal. The most powerful story in the world is the one you tell yourself about the obstacles and challenges in front of you. A positive story doesn’t always ensure success, but a negative one almost guarantees failure.
Once a story takes root, no matter how false, it can be hard to change. This applies to both humanity in general and to each of us individually. Change the story to change the results.
Character
At their core, characters are bundles of traits and motivations, of habits and histories, of strengths and flaws. They are the total of their choices and actions, the product of genetics, choices, and circumstances. But a great character is more than just a list of attributes. A great character is a paradox, a contradiction, a mystery that unfolds over the course of a story.
In many ways, character is destiny. The choices a character makes, the actions they take, flow inevitably from who they are. A cautious, thoughtful character will approach a problem differently than an impulsive, emotional one. A character with a strong moral compass will make different decisions than one with a flexible relationship to the truth. Obstacles reveal character.
But character is not static; it is not a fixed point but a journey. The best characters are the ones who grow and change throughout a story and who are transformed by the events of the plot and the interactions with other characters. Think of Ebenezer Scrooge, the miserly old man who learns the true meaning of generosity.
Understanding a person’s character allows you to see someone for who they are at their core and step into their shoes. This helps you understand why they make their choices, predict their behavior, and empathize with their story. But remember, character is not set in stone. What happened yesterday is over. Today’s obstacles and challenges are nothing more than an opportunity to take a step toward or away from the person you want to be. No single choice satisfies the pursuit, only repeated steps in the right direction.
Setting
The setting is the stage upon which the drama of the story unfolds, the physical and temporal context that shapes and reflects the actions of characters. An active participant in the narrative, setting is a force that can enable or hinder, reveal or conceal, enlighten or deceive. The setting is not just where the story happens but why it happens.
Setting anchors a story in time and place, providing sensory details that make it real. But setting is more than just physical description. It’s also the social, cultural, and historical context that defines the parameters of what is possible and what is permissible for the characters.
A story set in medieval Europe will have different constraints and opportunities than one set in modern- day Tokyo. A character in a small, gossipy village will face different challenges than one in a large, anonymous city. Setting shapes the choices characters make, the conflicts they face, the resolutions they find.
But setting is not just a one-way street, not just the environment acting upon the characters. Characters also act upon and interact with their setting. They navigate its challenges, exploit its opportunities, and leave their mark on its landscape. Every story is a symbiotic relationship between character and setting, a reciprocal exchange of influence and transformation.
Setting is the silent force that influences our fate. What we think and do is greatly impacted by our environment. This leads to a powerful and profound point: to change your behavior, change your environment. If you don’t, it will change you.
Performance
Performance is the art of the ephemeral, the fleeting moment of creative expression existing only in the here and now. It’s where the boundaries between art and life blur, the artist’s body and actions become the medium, and the audience’s presence and participation become integral.
At its core, performance is about presence, about the immediacy and intimacy of live action. In a world increasingly mediated by screens, live performance asserts the primacy of embodied experience, of the direct encounter between performer and spectator. It’s a reminder that art is not just a thing to be consumed but an event to be lived.
But performance is also about absence, the gaps and spaces between action and interpretation, intention and reception. Unlike a painting or a sculpture, a performance can never be fully captured or contained. It exists only in the memories and testimonies of those who were there, in the ripples and reverberations it sends through the culture. Performance embraces the contingency and open- endedness of the live event, the sense that anything could happen, that meaning is always in the making.
This contingency is both the power and the challenge of performance. It allows for spontaneity and responsiveness, adapting to and incorporating the unpredictable elements of the moment. Yet, it makes performance resistant to the control and perfection other art forms aspire to. A performance is always a collaboration with chance, a dance with the unknown.
As audience members, we are not just passive observers but active participants in the performance. Our presence, reactions, and energy all become part of the work. Think of fans transmitting energy to a team to rally them from behind with a few minutes left in the game. Performance invites us to be cocreators, to complete the work through our own interpretations and responses. In so doing, we become part of something larger than ourselves.
When we are fully present in any performance where someone is making themselves vulnerable, we may just glimpse the raw, unedited, unpolished essence of what it means to be human.
The Mental Models of Military and War
Seeing the Front
One of the most valuable military tactics is the habit of “personally seeing the front” before making decisions – not always relying on advisors, maps, and reports, all of which can be faulty or biased. The Map/Territory model, as does the incentive model, illustrates the problem of not seeing the front. Leaders of any organization can generally benefit from seeing the front, as it provides firsthand information and tends to improve the quality of secondhand information.
Asymmetric Warfare
The asymmetry model leads to an application in warfare whereby one side seemingly “plays by different rules” than the other side due to circumstance. Generally, this model is applied by an insurgency with limited resources. Unable to out-muscle their opponents, asymmetric fighters use other tactics, as with terrorism creating fear that’s disproportionate to their actual destructive ability.
Two-Front War
The Second World War was a good example of a two-front war. Once Russia and Germany became enemies, Germany was forced to split its troops and send them to separate fronts, weakening their impact on either front. Opening a two-front war can often be a useful tactic, as can solving a two-front war or avoiding one, as in the example of an organization tamping down internal discord to focus on its competitors.
Though asymmetric insurgent warfare can be extremely effective, competitors have developed counterinsurgency strategies over time. Recently and famously, General David Petraeus of the United States led the development of counterinsurgency plans involving no additional force but substantial gains. Tit-for-tat warfare or competition often leads to a feedback loop that demands insurgency and counterinsurgency.
Somewhat paradoxically, the stronger two opponents become, the less likely they may be to destroy one another. This process of mutually assured destruction occurs not just in warfare, as with the development of global nuclear warheads, but also in business, as with the avoidance of destructive price wars between competitors. However, in a fat-tailed world, it is also possible that mutually assured destruction scenarios simply make destruction more severe in the event of a mistake (pushing destruction into the “tails” of the distribution).
The Mental Models of Human Nature and Judgment
1. Trust
Fundamentally, the modern world operates on trust. Familial trust is generally a given (otherwise we’d have a hell of a time surviving), but we also choose to trust chefs, clerks, drivers, factory workers, executives, and many others. A trusting system is one that tends to work most efficiently; the rewards of trust are extremely high.
2. Bias from Incentives
Highly responsive to incentives, humans have perhaps the most varied and hardest to understand set of incentives in the animal kingdom. This causes us to distort our thinking when it is in our own interest to do so. A wonderful example is a salesman truly believing that his product will improve the lives of its users. It’s not merely convenient that he sells the product; the fact of his selling the product causes a very real bias in his own thinking.
3. Pavlovian Association
Ivan Pavlov very effectively demonstrated that animals can respond not just to direct incentives but also to associated objects; remember the famous dogs salivating at the ring of a bell. Human beings are much the same and can feel positive and negative emotion towards intangible objects, with the emotion coming from past associations rather than direct effects.
4. Tendency to Feel Envy & Jealousy
Humans have a tendency to feel envious of those receiving more than they are, and a desire “get what is theirs” in due course. The tendency towards envy is strong enough to drive otherwise irrational behavior, but is as old as humanity itself. Any system ignorant of envy effects will tend to self-immolate over time.
5. Tendency to Distort Due to Liking/Loving or Disliking/Hating
Based on past association, stereotyping, ideology, genetic influence, or direct experience, humans have a tendency to distort their thinking in favor of people or things that they like and against people or things they dislike. This tendency leads to overrating the things we like and underrating or broadly categorizing things we dislike, often missing crucial nuances in the process.
6. Denial
Anyone who has been alive long enough realizes that, as the saying goes, “denial is not just a river in Africa.” This is powerfully demonstrated in situations like war or drug abuse, where denial has powerful destructive effects but allows for behavioral inertia. Denying reality can be a coping mechanism, a survival mechanism, or a purposeful tactic.
7. Availability Heuristic
One of the most useful findings of modern psychology is what Daniel Kahneman calls the Availability Bias or Heuristic: We tend to most easily recall what is salient, important, frequent, and recent. The brain has its own energy-saving and inertial tendencies that we have little control over – the availability heuristic is likely one of them. Having a truly comprehensive memory would be debilitating. Some sub-examples of the availability heuristic include the Anchoring and Sunk Cost Tendencies.
8. Representativeness Heuristic
The three major psychological findings that fall under Representativeness, also defined by Kahneman and his partner Tversky, are:
a. Failure to Account for Base Rates
An unconscious failure to look at past odds in determining current or future behavior.
b. Tendency to Stereotype
The tendency to broadly generalize and categorize rather than look for specific nuance. Like availability, this is generally a necessary trait for energy-saving in the brain.
c. Failure to See False Conjunctions
Most famously demonstrated by the Linda Test, the same two psychologists showed that students chose more vividly described individuals as more likely to fit into a predefined category than individuals with broader, more inclusive, but less vivid descriptions, even if the vivid example was a mere subset of the more inclusive set. These specific examples are seen as more representative of the category than those with the broader but vaguer descriptions, in violation of logic and probability.
9. Social Proof (Safety in Numbers)
Human beings are one of many social species, along with bees, ants, and chimps, among many more. We have a DNA-level instinct to seek safety in numbers and will look for social guidance of our behavior. This instinct creates a cohesive sense of cooperation and culture which would not otherwise be possible but also leads us to do foolish things if our group is doing them as well.
10. Narrative Instinct
Human beings have been appropriately called “the storytelling animal” because of our instinct to construct and seek meaning in narrative. It’s likely that long before we developed the ability to write or to create objects, we were telling stories and thinking in stories. Nearly all social organizations, from religious institutions to corporations to nation-states, run on constructions of the narrative instinct.
11. Curiosity Instinct
We like to call other species curious, but we are the most curious of all, an instinct which led us out of the savanna and led us to learn a great deal about the world around us, using that information to create the world in our collective minds. The curiosity instinct leads to unique human behavior and forms of organization like the scientific enterprise. Even before there were direct incentives to innovate, humans innovated out of curiosity.
12. Language Instinct
The psychologist Steven Pinker calls our DNA-level instinct to learn grammatically constructed language the Language Instinct. The idea that grammatical language is not a simple cultural artifact was first popularized by the linguist Noam Chomsky. As we saw with the narrative instinct, we use these instincts to create shared stories, as well as to gossip, solve problems, and fight, among other things. Grammatically ordered language theoretically carries infinite varying meaning.
13. First-Conclusion Bias
As Charlie Munger famously pointed out, the mind works a bit like a sperm and egg: the first idea gets in and then the mind shuts. Like many other tendencies, this is probably an energy-saving device. Our tendency to settle on first conclusions leads us to accept many erroneous results and cease asking questions; it can be countered with some simple and useful mental routines.
14. Tendency to Overgeneralize from Small Samples
It’s important for human beings to generalize; we need not see every instance to understand the general rule, and this works to our advantage. With generalizing, however, comes a subset of errors when we forget about the Law of Large Numbers and act as if it does not exist. We take a small number of instances and create a general category, even if we have no statistically sound basis for the conclusion.
15. Relative Satisfaction/Misery Tendencies
The envy tendency is probably the most obvious manifestation of the relative satisfaction tendency, but nearly all studies of human happiness show that it is related to the state of the person relative to either their past or their peers, not absolute. These relative tendencies cause us great misery or happiness in a very wide variety of objectively different situations and make us poor predictors of our own behavior and feelings.
16. Commitment & Consistency Bias
As psychologists have frequently and famously demonstrated, humans are subject to a bias towards keeping their prior commitments and staying consistent with our prior selves when possible. This trait is necessary for social cohesion: people who often change their conclusions and habits are often distrusted. Yet our bias towards staying consistent can become, as one wag put it, a “hobgoblin of foolish minds” – when it is combined with the first-conclusion bias, we end up landing on poor answers and standing pat in the face of great evidence.
17. Hindsight Bias
Once we know the outcome, it’s nearly impossible to turn back the clock mentally. Our narrative instinct leads us to reason that we knew it all along (whatever “it” is), when in fact we are often simply reasoning post-hoc with information not available to us before the event. The hindsight bias explains why it’s wise to keep a journal of important decisions for an unaltered record and to re-examine our beliefs when we convince ourselves that we knew it all along.
18. Sensitivity to Fairness
Justice runs deep in our veins. In another illustration of our relative sense of well-being, we are careful arbiters of what is fair. Violations of fairness can be considered grounds for reciprocal action, or at least distrust. Yet fairness itself seems to be a moving target. What is seen as fair and just in one time and place may not be in another. Consider that slavery has been seen as perfectly natural and perfectly unnatural in alternating phases of human existence.
19. Tendency to Overestimate Consistency of Behavior (Fundamental Attribution Error)
We tend to over-ascribe the behavior of others to their innate traits rather than to situational factors, leading us to overestimate how consistent that behavior will be in the future. In such a situation, predicting behavior seems not very difficult. Of course, in practice this assumption is consistently demonstrated to be wrong, and we are consequently surprised when others do not act in accordance with the “innate” traits we’ve endowed them with.
20. Influence of Stress (Including Breaking Points)
Stress causes both mental and physiological responses and tends to amplify the other biases. Almost all human mental biases become worse in the face of stress as the body goes into a fight-or-flight response, relying purely on instinct without the emergency brake of Daniel Kahneman’s “System 2” type of reasoning. Stress causes hasty decisions, immediacy, and a fallback to habit, thus giving rise to the elite soldiers’ motto: “In the thick of battle, you will not rise to the level of your expectations, but fall to the level of your training.”
21. Survivorship Bias
A major problem with historiography – our interpretation of the past – is that history is famously written by the victors. We do not see what Nassim Taleb calls the “silent grave” – the lottery ticket holders who did not win. Thus, we over-attribute success to things done by the successful agent rather than to randomness or luck, and we often learn false lessons by exclusively studying victors without seeing all of the accompanying losers who acted in the same way but were not lucky enough to succeed.
22. Tendency to Want to Do Something (Fight/Flight, Intervention, Demonstration of Value, etc.)
We might term this Boredom Syndrome: Most humans have the tendency to need to act, even when their actions are not needed. We also tend to offer solutions even when we do not have knowledge to solve the problem.
23. Falsification / Confirmation Bias
What a man wishes, he also believes. Similarly, what we believe is what we choose to see. This is commonly referred to as the confirmation bias. It is a deeply ingrained mental habit, both energy-conserving and comfortable, to look for confirmations of long-held wisdom rather than violations. Yet the scientific process – including hypothesis generation, blind testing when needed, and objective statistical rigor – is designed to root out precisely the opposite, which is why it works so well when followed.
The modern scientific enterprise operates under the principle of falsification: A method is termed scientific if it can be stated so that a certain defined result would cause it to be proved false. Pseudo-knowledge and pseudo-science operate and propagate by being unfalsifiable. As with astrology, we cannot prove them either correct or incorrect because the conditions under which they would be shown false are never stated.
