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To get practice, you can’t just sit and scratch your chin. You have to make a predction, write it down, then see how real life played out a few years down the road. It helps to write down predictions you considered but rejected and why.
My thinking was that the reference-style books are easy to forget and enjoyable but subject to being forgotten specifically because you spend less time with any single model. Some books are closer to survey courses, reviewing a lot of material. They aren't bad, they can be fun. But the books I cited above specifically feel focused on single concepts, and thus "teach" them quite well imo.
So, I am specifically curious about books that go deep, evaluate, or really drive home individual models.
Mental models are simply how your brain works. You don't need to read books about them before they become effective.
You don't need to understand how your legs operate before you can learn to walk.
The only thing you can learn are concepts. But there's billions of them. It's what education does.
It's somewhat useful to understand how the brain operates through mental models. But there's only a single mechanism at play. Basically it's what happens when your brain sends emotional signals about your environment in relation to your mental model of it.
[1] https://leanpub.com/generalsystemsthinking
Edit: no relation (I believe?) to Gabriel Weinberg of Duck Duck Go who is also being mentioned in this discussion.
# Books edited by John Brockman - 1) This Explains Everything, 2) This Idea is Brilliant, 3) This Will Make You Smarter, 4) Thinking
# Personal MBA by Josh Kaufman
Also second the recommendation of other books based on Charlie Munger's wisdom and farnam street's reading list.
Thinking in Systems: A Primer by Donella Meadows Once you start looking for positive and negative feedback loops in the world around you, it's hard to stop. In particular, Meadow's book is great because it also goes beyond +/- loops in isolation, and shows more complicated patterns, such as eroding goal patterns and traps that often cause public policy interventions to fail.
This question is strange to me. Mental models are simply how your brain works. You don't need to read books about them before they become effective. You don't need to understand how your legs operate before you can learn to walk. The only thing you can learn are concepts. But there's billions of them. It's what education does. It's somewhat useful to understand how the brain operates through mental models. But there'…
Here's an example :
"The heart and soul of the integrity of the ( Fedex )system is that all the packages have to be shifted rapidly in one central location each night. And the system has no integrity if the whole shift can’t be done fast. And Federal Express had one hell of a time getting the thing to work. And they tried moral suasion, they tried everything in the world, and finally somebody got the happy thought that they were paying the night shift by the hour, and that maybe if they paid them by the shift, the system would work better. And lo and behold, that solution worked."
Source : https://fs.blog/2017/10/bias-incentives-reinforcement/
Edit : clarity and some speeling mistakes ;-)
The Catechism of the Catholic Church