I love The Decision Book: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/9793361-the-decision-boo...
... read and skim it quite a few times and it's super nice and quick to use.
Ask HN: Which books teach mental models?
31–40 of 98 posts
Re: Ask HN: Which books teach mental models?
#32Perhaps a different flavor of mental model, but a great book: "Metaphors We Live By" by George Lakoff
It seems like MWLB should be able to provide the basis space for all other models, and looser networks like ConceptNet.
I imagine each concept a bit like a Chinese character, with radicals (basis set), composition using scaling and placement (metric space relations), along various abstract dimensions (meaning and sound in the case of the characters).
It's a project that's been on my TODO list for far too long.
Re: Ask HN: Which books teach mental models?
#33This 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'…
True there are billions of concepts but if you think about it, a few concepts explain a ton of things. For e.g., incentives. A simple concept in theory but apply the right incentives if you are leading teams and you'll see a whole lot of improvements. And that's the beauty of mental models. You don't want billions of them. Maybe 20-30 of them have enough applicability for most of the things that you might want to cha…
I wish they had gone into what they meant by paid by the shift. Does that mean they got to go home early if the work was done? They had to stay later if it wasn't? I'm not sure that paying for 8 hours is much incentive, and forcing people to work more for the same money seems like it would be a recipe for disaster. Giving a reward for getting through the mail faster by getting to go home early send like a pretty awesome reward though.
Re: Ask HN: Which books teach mental models?
#34"Man's Search for Meaning" by Viktor E. Frankl may be?
Yes. And if I may continue with another old book that IMHO deserves to be mentioned: Neurosis and Human Growth by Karen Horney.
Re: Ask HN: Which books teach mental models?
#35I am reading The Fifth Discipline by Peter M. Senge at the moment.
It is a fantastic book that came out in the 90s and was updated in the 00s. It describes the need and practical solutions to systemic thinking for a learning / adaptive organization. It covers a lot of different areas:
- introduction to systemic thinking (via a very good example and then a formalised introduction to three often occuring systems)
- personal mastery (life long learning with a reflective attitude) as foundation for a learning organization (i.e. how can personal self improvement be scaled up to a similar process with many people involved while keeping everything together)
- practical examples at the end (I have not read that part yet, I am just inferring from the chapter titles)
Even that I have not read the book completely, it is now one of the books I always recommend when friends with interest in founding a startup ask me for advice. It is one of the very few "management" (loose category) books I have read that I actually found useful and actionable. Only problem is that it is quite big so it takes dedication to read through it.
Edited for formatting, title..
Re: Ask HN: Which books teach mental models?
#36Language in Thought and Action by S. I. Hayakawa is an introduction to General Semantics and deals with the limitations of language-oriented mental models, e.g. "the map is not the territory," a reminder that a model is just a model and not reality (or what Joel Spolsky would call "a leaky abstraction"). [0]
The World of Null-A by A. E. Van Vogt is a science-fiction novel with a world that has largely adopted General Semantics. [1]
[0]https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/567189.Language_in_Thoug...
[1]https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/951290.The_World_of_Null...
Re: Ask HN: Which books teach mental models?
#37I am reading The Fifth Discipline by Peter M. Senge at the moment. It is a fantastic book that came out in the 90s and was updated in the 00s. It describes the need and practical solutions to systemic thinking for a learning / adaptive organization. It covers a lot of different areas: - introduction to systemic thinking (via a very good example and then a formalised introduction to three often occuring systems) - per…
Small correction: The title is The Fifth Discipline.
Re: Ask HN: Which books teach mental models?
#38This 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'…
True there are billions of concepts but if you think about it, a few concepts explain a ton of things. For e.g., incentives. A simple concept in theory but apply the right incentives if you are leading teams and you'll see a whole lot of improvements. And that's the beauty of mental models. You don't want billions of them. Maybe 20-30 of them have enough applicability for most of the things that you might want to cha…
Yes, I agree logical concepts can be abstracted into generic core concepts. Like how the concept of "picking up a coffee cup" can be abstracted into the more generic core concept of "picking up an object" which can be applied more broadly.
But that's more about logical reasoning than it is about mental models. A mental model is how the brain understands a logical concept.
There's also a danger with it becoming counter-productive. For example you might want to learn how to ride a bike. You educate yourself about the technical workings of the bike. How your body will balance itself. When you need to apply force on the paddles. Which muscles you will use to apply that force. You gain full understanding of the concept of "riding bike". This doesn't mean, however, you now have a proper functioning mental model of it. The other kid didn't do all the research you did. He just got on his bike and started trying. After some trial and error he's already making some distance. His mental model of "riding bike" might already exceed yours even though you have a better understanding of how it works. You might even be learning more slowly since you're constantly distracted by how the development of your mental model matches up with your understanding of it.
I believe this is also why some people stutter. They're constantly thinking about their speech. Their mental model of "speaking" gets interrupted by them thinking about it.
So I agree it's valuable to understand core concepts. It's valuable to think about how the brain works. It's valuable to be able to use your feelings (caused by your mental model) as tools to effectively make use of your brain. But I'm not sure it's wise to mess with the mental model that the brain creates about concepts. Or to define a logical concept as a mental model.
Re: Ask HN: Which books teach mental models?
#39Not a book, but a course. This one was insanely useful for me and I've applied the models countless times: [Model Thinking][0]. I heartily recommend this to anyone who wants to learn about models and has some spare time:
Re: Ask HN: Which books teach mental models?
#40Not a book, but I recommend the Coursera Model Thinking course.