Book Review
The Great Mental Models. Volume 1 (link) 181 pages. Farnham Street
Shane Paris has given his children a great gift. He’s taken the best ideas on mental models and distilled it in a 181 pages.
The tone is humble. Parrish notes the ideas in the book are not not his own. He’s taken the best ideas from the finest minds and put them down on paper.
This is gift for all.
I look forward to the next volumes.
Over the coming months, I’ll take some of these ideas, and show how useful they are as a lobbyist.
Parrish draws on Charlie Munger who used mental models to help guide his decisions. This lattice work approach works. Munger is a self made billionaire and partner of Warren Buffet.
The book is divided in 9 sections for each model. I have listed each of the models and the supporting quote given in the book.
The basic idea
Aquring Wisdom.. You’re only as good as your tools.
“ I believe in the discipline of mastering the best of what other people have figured out” Charlie Munger
9 Mental Models
1. The Map is not the Terriory. Reality Check.
“The map appears to us more real than the land”. D.H.Lawrenece.
2. Circle of Competence.
“I’m no genius. I’m smart in spots – but I stay around those spots.” Thomas Watson
3. First Principles Things. Go back to basics.
“I don’t know what’s the matter with people: they don’t learn by understanding; they learn by some other way – by rote or something. Their knowledge is so fragile”. Richard Feynman.
4. Thought Expirement.
“Creativity is intelligence having fun”. Anonymous
5. Second-Order Thinking. What happens next.
“Technology I’d fine, but the scientists and engineers only partially think through their problems. They solve certain aspects, but not the total, and as a consequences it is slapping us back in the face very hard” Barbara McClintock.
6. Probalistic Thinking. What are the chances?
“The theory of probability is the only mathematical tool available to help map the unknown and the uncontrollable. It is fortunate that this tool, while trick, is extraordinarily powerful and convenient”. Benoit Mandelbrot.
7. Inversion. Change your perspective.
“The text of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposing ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function. One should, for example, be able to see that things are hopeless yet be determined to make them otherwise”. F.Scott Fitzgerald.
8. Occam’s Razor. Keep it simple.
“Anybody can make the simple complicated. Creativity is is making the complicated simple.” Charles Mingus.
9. Hanlon’s Razor. Don’t assume the worst.
“I need to listen well so that I hear what is not said”. Thuli Madonsela