Peter Hollins - Mental Models

📖 https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/45027848

MMs

1. Address "Important"; Ignore "Urgent" to separate priorities from impostors
2. Visualize All the Dominoes to make decisions as informed as possible
3. Make Reversible Decisions to remove indecisions and have a bias to action
4. Seek "Satisfiction" to achieve your priorities and ignore what doesn't matter
5. Stay within 40% - 70% to balance information with action
6. Minimize Regret by consulting the future you on decisions
7. Ignore "Black Swans" to understand how outliers shouldn't change your thinking
8. Look for Equilibrium Points to find real patterns in data and not be fooled
9. Wait for the Regression to the Mean to find real patterns in data and not be fooled
10. What Would Bayes Do to calculate probabilities and predict the future based on real events
11. Do It Like Darwin to seek real, honest truth in a situation
12. Think With System 2 to think analytically instead of emotionally
13. Peer Review Your Perspectives to understand the consensus view and why you might differ
14. Find Your Own Flaws to scrutinize yourself before others can
15. Separate Correlation From Causation to understand what truly needs to be addressed to solve a problem

Decision Making For Speed And Context

To the man with only a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.

• Abraham Maslow

A mental model is a blueprint to emphasize important aspects of whatever you're facing, and it defines context, background and direction.

Without them, you are only able to see the haphazard, individual elements with no connection to each other.

A chef is someone who has the mental models of flavor profiles, what basic ingredients are needed for a stock or a sauce, typical techniques for different meats, and the conventional beverage and food pairings.

You can think of mental models as life heuristics or guidelines to evaluate and comprehend.

Mental models aren't perfect representations of the world around us, they serve to separate the signal from the noise for a specific perspective.

Too few mental models limit your capability to comprehend.

MM #11: Do It Like Darwin to seek real, honest truth in a situation

Seeing clearly means seeing both sides of the table.

The basic guideline of Darwin's Golden rule is to be more than just open to contradicting or opposing ideas but give them equal attention as your own assumptions.

Darwin completely immersed himself in evidence or explanations that went against his findings because he was aware that the human mind is inclined to dispose of contrary views.

Ignoring or brushing over the opposing view creates a mental dishonesty.

Darwin was immune to confirmation bias.

His stances is related to intellectual honestly and the maxim "strong opinions but held lightly". It assumes intellectual humility: being unattached to any stances or theories and simply following the evidence.

Darwin forces a dialog of skepticism back onto himself instead of onto others in defensiveness.

He would direct questions inward, such as: What do you know? Are you sure? Why are you sure? How can it be proved? What potential errors have you made?

Treat all the evidence you receive by the same standards of reliability. You must be circumspect of all evidence, and this means tending toward high-quality information more than high quantities of information.