Effective Mental Models Flashcards
Schrödingers cat?
Very hard to get sensible interpretation of this. Even the physicist who came up with this threw it out and went into biology.
cat in a box in a thought experiment has poison inserted into box. When you open the box, the cat will either be dead or alive. Until then, both outcomes could be true.
Also, if you open the box, you could alter the eventual outcome … ie letting the cat escape just Before it is overpowered by the poison can save cats life.
Something quantum physicists are finding is that observing certain microlevel phenomenon from different vantage points will cause the microlevel waves or cells to behave differently. They can’t explain why.
Antifragile … popularized by Nasib Taleb
The property that certain individuals or things have where they can benefit or grow from chaos, stressors, adverse events, controversy, bad press, etc.
“Taleb uses ancient examples to explain the triad of Fragile, Robust, and Antifragile. Damocles, who dines with a sword dangling over his head, is fragile. A small stress to the string holding the sword will kill him.
The Phoenix, which dies and is reborn from its ashes, is robust. It always returns to the same state when suffering a massive stressor.
But the Hydra demonstrates Antifragility. When one head is cut off, two grow back.”
https://www.nateliason.com/notes/antifragile
Inverse thinking
Examples: Instead of asking how to do something, ask how to not do it. Instead of focusing on what you have to do to succeed, identify what will lead to failure and avoid those.
Great thinkers, icons, and innovators think forward and backward. They consider the opposite side of things. Occasionally, they drive their brain in reverse.
First Principles … creating/problem solving from these
Clarify your thinking and explain the origins of your ideas. Why do I think this? Have I always felt this way?
Challenge assumptions. How do I know this is true? What if I thought the opposite?
Look for evidence. What is one example? What other information do we need?
Consider alternative perspectives. How would others respond? How do I know I am correct?
Examine consequences and implications. What if I am wrong? What are the consequences if I am?
Question the original questions. Why did I think that? Was I correct? What conclusions can I draw from this process?
https://www.readynorth.com/blog/what-is-first-principles-thinking
Occam’s razor
Paraphrased as the simplest explanation is usually the best one.
Or when choosing between hypotheses with equal explanatory power, choose the one that has the fewest assumptions.
Hanlon’s razor
a mental shortcut which teaches us, in the words of Robert J. Hanlon to “never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.” In other words, rather than questioning people’s intentions, question their competence or awareness.
Herd immunity
the percentage of people who need to be vaccinated for a disease as contagious as the measles is around 95%.
Herd immunity can apply to maintaining social, business, or industry norms. If infractions to social (etc) norms are left unchecked, new difficult to reverse norm can be established.
principal-agent problem
when a person or company serves as an agent for another person or company, that person takes more risks than the principal would if the principal were acting alone
Goodhart’s law
When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.
I.e. an employee at a car dealership sees that he will get a bonus for selling X-number of cars. So sells alot of cars at a loss to hit that goal and get the bonus
Streisand effect
The Streisand effect is an unintended consequence of attempts to hide, remove, or censor information, where the effort instead increases public awareness of the information.
The effect is named for American singer and actress Barbra Streisand, whose attorney’s attempt in 2003 to suppress the publication of a photograph showing her clifftop residence in Malibu, taken to document coastal erosion in California, inadvertently drew far greater attention to the previously obscure photograph.
Parkinson’s law
“work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion”.
The number of workers within public administration, bureaucracy or officialdom tends to grow, regardless of the amount of work to be done. This was attributed mainly to two factors: that officials want subordinates, not rivals, and that officials make work for each other.
Lindy effect (law)
The idea that the longer that some non-perishable thing (book, idea, business, organization) survives, the more likely it is to survive even longer. Taleb says this can be evidence of antifragility because of surviving all the chaos that time brings.
