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Ask HN: Any recommended books on developing mental models?

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Re: Ask HN: Any recommended books on developing mental models?

#52

Post by dereg »

I work in investments, and I make More Than You Know, by Michael Maubossin, required reading. He does an excellent job synthesizing information across fields. I highly recommend it for anybody interested in diving into the field of mental models. It is a book with many citations, so an avid reader will be served well by this book as a launchpad for more learning.

http://amzn.to/2BW8e8l

Re: Ask HN: Any recommended books on developing mental models?

#55

Post by gfody »

yusufp wrote: post #33

Just started going down this rabbit hole myself. I've noticed to really grasp and develop your own mental models you deeply have to understand a few things first: 1. Human biases: Every mental model is built upon some human bias. 2. How incentives work: Understanding the motivation behind why people do what they do. 3. Mental thought construction: Understanding how the brain gathers, processes and stores information.…

this is a great list. I would add Hofstadter's Analogy as the fuel and fire of thinking and Chomsky's New horizons in the study of language and mind. they show that language structures are fundamental to consciousness.

Re: Ask HN: Any recommended books on developing mental models?

#57

Post by dang »

Luc wrote: post #38
vog wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Use proper URIs? (Or in this case: an ISBN, which serves the same purpose. Unambiguous references are no longer an open issue. Open issue are: the lazyness to not use them, and persistent references (until either Bittorrent or IPFS is fully deployed).)

Yeah, I figured you had an axe to grind.

Please don't be rude in comments here, even when someone else had an axe to grind.

Re: Ask HN: Any recommended books on developing mental models?

#58

Post by thyrsus »

zitterbewegung wrote: post #44
trendia wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you distinguish between deconstruction that is accurate vs one that is "useful" but inaccurate? It seems rather easy to use deconstruction to see things that aren't really there.

Yes, that is an astute observation and the only way you can gauge accuracy is to confirm ground truth some other way. Try probing the system so that it conforms to your model and revise it when new evidence is apparent.

...and remember to make tests that don't confirm your model. If the set is 2, 4, 8, and your model is "powers of two", then, sure test 16, but also test 1, 3, 6, 0.5, 0.1 (maybe the correct model is "also 2 to the power 0" or "two to any integer, including negatives" or "all even numbers" or "any integer" - or something else).

Re: Ask HN: Any recommended books on developing mental models?

#60

Post by patricklouys »

allenleee wrote: post #7

1. Principles by Ray Dalio https://www.principles.com/ 2. Extreme Ownership by Jocko Willink

Jocko is great. I also really enjoyed "Discipline Equals Freedom: Field Manual"

I think it's a little more to the point compared to Extreme Ownership.

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