The Great Mental Models
Shane Parrish

Summary

From the founder of the Knowledge Project, one of the best podcasts out there, Shane describes first principles across multiple disciplines and how to use first-principles decision making in your own life

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Notes

When you learn to see the world as it is and not as what you want it to be, everything changes

‘Nothing has yet been said that’s not been said before’ - Publius Terentius

‘I believe in the discipline of mastering the best of what other people have figured out.’ - Charlie Munger

You must be open to new perspectives to understand the consequences of your actions

‘Most geniuses prosper not by deconstructing intricate complexities but by exploiting unrecognized simplicities’ - Andy Beoit

Multidisciplinary thinking leads to better models, which means better thinking

You can’t really know anything if you just remember isolated facts and say them back

Put your mental models like a latticework. Learning one discipline is just one piece of the bigger puzzle

Using and failing as you acknowledge, reflect and learn from it is how you build your mental model repertoire 

When the ways of the world seem less mysterious, you gain confidence in how you navigate it and than turns into a more successful life

The map of reality is not reality. It’s a mixture of a dynamic always moving terrain and you have to better understand the terrain

‘What is common to many is least taken care of, for all men have greater regard for what is their own rather than for what they possess in common w/ others.’ - Aristotle

When thinking about maps, remember:

• Reality is ultimate update
• Consider the cartographer
• Maps can influence territories
• Remember that a map captures a territory at a moment in time
• Maps are not objective creations: they reflect values, standards and limitations of their creators

When ego and not competence drives what we do, we have blind spots

Building a circle of feedback requires curiosity/desire to learn, monitoring and feedback

Defer all major spending until you’ve looked on the internet

Always think from first principles: take something apart, test your assumptions about it, reconstruct it and see what happens

Socractic questioning:

• Clarify your thinking on the origins of ideas (why do I think this)
• Challenge  assumptions (How do I know this is true?)
• Look for evidence (how can I back this up)
• Consider alternative perspectives (how do I know I’m correct)
• Examining consequences and implications (what if I’m wrong)
• Question the original question (why did I think about that?)

To improve something, you need to know why it was successful or not

Thought experiments are extremely useful exercises

Necessity does not equal sufficiency. Just because you’re good at sports does not make you a professional athlete

Always consider second-order consequences: thinking farther ahead and holistically

• What are the unintended consequences going to be?

Develop trust for future success: going for immediate payout in our interactions w/ people guarantees an interaction will be a one off

By delaying gratification now, you will save time in the future

Mary Wollstonecraft from the 18th century started feminism in ‘A vindication of the rights of a woman’

Balance second order thinking with sound judgement and practicality

Bayesian thinking: using all relevant prior info in making decisions

Predicting the future is impossible but you can prepare

Learn how to fail properly: by failing more often, you’re learning more and less vulnerable to the volatility of the world

Correlation does not equal causation

Inversion: turn your thinking upside down. Look at it backwards instead of forward

• If you invert a problem, what else would have to be true for it to work?

Instead of selling a product or service, sell a new behaviour/way of behaving

• Instead of thinking how can I win, think about how not to lose

Ocean’s razor: simpler explanations are more likely to be true than complicated ones

When you see something you don’t like and seems wrong, we assume it’s intentional. But it’s more likely it was completely unintentional

Vasili Arkipov saved the world from nuclear disaster in 1962

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