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Ask HN: Which books teach mental models?

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Re: Ask HN: Which books teach mental models?

#41

Post by traderjane »

Zanni wrote: post #36

Language 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…

I think the truth is somewhere in the middle. The model is a map to the world, but at some point, you start thinking about the implications of your model and you work out an unusual idea, and then it turns out the model implicates new phenomena.

What guided your ability to find the hidden gold nugget? Lucky guess? Or at some point, if you get the construction of a map so right, the map will help you compute interesting truths yet discovered.

Re: Ask HN: Which books teach mental models?

#42

Post by prennert »

plainOldText wrote: post #37
prennert wrote: post #35

I 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 .

Not sure how I could get that wrong. I guess. I need to look at the title page more often.. Thanks. Corrected it.

Re: Ask HN: Which books teach mental models?

#43

Post by james_s_tayler »

andrenth wrote: post #11

* Poor Charlie's Almanack: The Wit and Wisdom of Charles T. Munger * Seeking Wisdom: From Darwin to Munger * The Model Thinker: What You Need to Know to Make Data Work for You * The Great Mental Models

I'm reading The Model Thinker at the moment. +1

Re: Ask HN: Which books teach mental models?

#44

Post by james_s_tayler »

ineedasername wrote: post #5

Perhaps a different flavor of mental model, but a great book: "Metaphors We Live By" by George Lakoff

I recently read Shortcut, which is another book about analogy/metaphor and the role it plays in thinking. Highly recommend anyone to read one or two books on this topic.

Re: Ask HN: Which books teach mental models?

#45

Post by haraball »

cannonedhamster wrote: post #33
vmurthy wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 awes…

I worked in a warehouse once, emptying containers full of boxes. We were paid by "container hours", so if we emptied a 4 hour container in 2 hours, we got double salary. That was a good motivation to work fast.

Re: Ask HN: Which books teach mental models?

#47

Post by DEADBEEFC0FFEE »

brianbreslin wrote: post #18

If you haven't seen it, this is one of the best resources on the subject: https://fs.blog/mental-models/ Farnham Street blog has a TON of fascinating articles.

There real challenge is remembering them, and determining which to use and investing the time to use them.

Re: Ask HN: Which books teach mental models?

#48

Post by plinkplonk »

tlb wrote: post #21

There are many good recommendations here, but I’d add that reading books about mental models is worth 10%, while practice thinking about real situations is 90%. 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.

+ 100.

the idea that sustained practice till you become fluent in the use of specific mental models is missing in much of the literature.

Just like learning any other skillset, using mental models effectively takes a lot of work.

This is often the missing key to effective use. It is one thing to read about a mental model (say Donella Meadows's systems thinking), and be able to recall the material from memory and quote it and so on. It is quite another to be able to apply that model (here systems thinking) to real life situations and get useful results.

I know many people who can quote chapter and verse of literature about mental models, but their thinking remains confused and ad hoc when it comes to dealing with real life problems.

To practice, one can also apply mental models to case studies/situations from the past and compare to the outcome predicted by the model and the actual outcome.(To be fair, there is a risk of making mental models fit the known outcome here, so one has to be aware of that)

EDIT: (not the same as mental models, but since someone mentioned ARIZ/TRIZ above) Edward De Bono's "Serious Creativity" and "Lateral Thinking for Management" (yes terrible title) are full of thinking tools that can be practiced systematically. Most of his books are repetitive and have varying ratios of fluff to core material, but these two together have most of his useful ideas.

Re: Ask HN: Which books teach mental models?

#49

Post by pjmorris »

jimmcslim wrote: post #25

'An Introduction to General Systems Thinking' [1] by the late, great Gerald Weinberg? [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.

+1 for this. Arguably all of Weinberg's works teach mental models. 'Are Your Lights On?' is an easy introduction to his writing and thinking, and 'Exploring Requirements: Quality Before Design' is directly applicable to any software project involving collection of requirements (I thin that's all of them.)

Re: Ask HN: Which books teach mental models?

#50

Post by gala8y »

wintercarver wrote: post #8
btilly wrote: post #4

https://superthinking.com/ introduces a whole bunch. It grew out of https://medium.com/@yegg/mental-models-i-find-repeatedly-use... . I would suggest starting there.

I guess my interest is actually in finding books that teach _one_ mental model, or at most one with a few variations to really send the point home. There's no shortage of fascinating compilations or general studies (e.g. Thinking Fast & Slow is not a walk-away-with-one-concept book, apart from perhaps "oh damn there's a lot of biases out there!"), but there might be a shortage of books that effectively focus on a sin…

I wouldn't call it a mental model, but Voice Dialogue method has tremendous positive impact on people's well-being and consciousness. Somehow it fits your question, I think. It is a mental model of sorts. "Embracing Our Selves", a book by Sidra and Hal Stone, is a beautifully written introduction.
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