Gabriel Weinberg's mental models

Question 1

Hanlon’s razor– Explaining 1

Answer 1

“Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by carelessness.” (related: fundamental attribution error — “ the tendency for people to place an undue emphasis on internal characteristics of the agent (character or intention), rather than external factors, in explaining another person’s behavior in a given situation.”)

Question 2

Occam’s Razor– Explaining 1

Answer 2

“Among competing hypotheses, the one with the fewest assumptions should be selected.” (related: conjunction fallacy, overfitting, “when you hear hoofbeats, think of horses not zebras.”)

Question 3

Arguing from first principles– Explaining 1

Answer 3

“A first principle is a basic, foundational, self-evident proposition or assumption that cannot be deduced from any other proposition or assumption.” (related: dimensionality reduction; orthogonality; “Reasonable minds can disagree” if underlying premises differ.)

Question 4

Cognitive Biases– Explaining 1

Answer 4

“Tendencies to think in certain ways that can lead to systematic deviations from a standard of rationality or good judgments.” (See list of cognitive biases) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases

Question 5

Proximate vs Root Cause– Explaining 1

Answer 5

“A proximate cause is an event which is closest to, or immediately responsible for causing, some observed result. This exists in contrast to a higher-level ultimate cause (or distal cause) which is usually thought of as the ‘real’ reason something occurred.” (related: 5 whys — “to determine the root cause of a defect or problem by repeating the question ‘Why?’)

Question 6

Thought Experiment– Modeling 1

Answer 6

“considers some hypothesis, theory, or principle for the purpose of thinking through its consequences.” (related: counterfactual thinking)

Question 7

Systems Thinking– Modeling 1

Answer 7

“By taking the overall system as well as its parts into account systems thinking is designed to avoid potentially contributing to further development of unintended consequences.” (related: causal loop diagrams; stock and flow; Le Chatelier’s principle, hysteresis — “the time-based dependence of a system’s output on present and past inputs.”; “Can’t see the forest for the trees.”)

Question 8

Scenario Analysis– Modeling 1

Answer 8

“A process of analyzing possible future events by considering alternative possible outcomes.” (related: “Skate to where the puck is going.”; black swan theory — “a metaphor that describes an event that comes as a surprise, has a major effect, and is often inappropriately rationalized after the fact with the benefit of hindsight.”)

Question 9

Power-law– Modeling 1

Answer 9

“A functional relationship between two quantities, where a relative change in one quantity results in a proportional relative change in the other quantity, independent of the initial size of those quantities: one quantity varies as a power of another.” (related: Pareto distribution; Pareto principle — “for many events, roughly 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes.”, diminishing returns, premature optimization, heavy-tailed distribution, fat-tailed distribution; long tail — “the portion of the distribution having a large number of occurrences far from the “head” or central part of the distribution.”; black swan theory — “a metaphor that describes an event that comes as a surprise, has a major effect, and is often inappropriately rationalized after the fact with the benefit of hindsight.”)

Question 10

Normal Distribution– Modeling 1

Answer 10

“A very common continuous probability distribution…Physical quantities that are expected to be the sum of many independent processes (such as measurement errors) often have distributions that are nearly normal.” (related: central limit theorem)

Question 11

Sensitivity Analysis– Modeling 1

Answer 11

“The study of how the uncertainty in the output of a mathematical model or system (numerical or otherwise) can be apportioned to different sources of uncertainty in its inputs.”

Question 12

Cost-benefit Analysis–Modeling 1

Answer 12

“A systematic approach to estimating the strengths and weaknesses of alternatives that satisfy transactions, activities or functional requirements for a business.” (related: net present value — “a measurement of the profitability of an undertaking that is calculated by subtracting the present values of cash outflows (including initial cost) from the present values of cash inflows over a period of time.”, discount rate)

Question 13

Simulation– Modeling 3

Answer 13

The imitation of the operation of a real-world process or system over time.” (related: Queuing theory — “the mathematical study of waiting lines, or queues.”)

Question 14

Pareto Efficiency– Modeling 3

Answer 14

“A state of allocation of resources in which it is impossible to make any one individual better off without making at least one individual worse off…A Pareto improvement is defined to be a change to a different allocation that makes at least one individual better off without making any other individual worse off, given a certain initial allocation of goods among a set of individuals.”