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They let us take on the impossible, evaluate the potential consequences of our actions, and re-examine history to make better decisions. Thought experiments are powerful because they help us learn from our mistakes and avoid future ones. In doing so, they can open up new avenues for inquiry and exploration. Thought experiments can be defined as вЂњdevices of the imagination used to investigate the nature of things.вЂќ Many disciplines, such as philosophy and physics, make use of thought experiments to examine what can be known.

If you know the first principles of something, you can build the rest of your knowledge around them to produce something new. Sometimes called reasoning from first principles, itвЂ™s a tool to help clarify complicated problems by separating the underlying ideas or facts from any assumptions based on them. Understanding your circle of competence improves decision making and outcomes.ДЇirst principles thinking is one of the best ways to reverse-engineer complicated situations and unleash creative possibility. When you are honest about where your knowledge is lacking you know where you are vulnerable and where you can improve. If you know what you understand, you know where you have an edge over others. When ego and not competence drives what we undertake, we have blind spots. This is important to keep in mind as we think through problems and make better decisions. A map can also be a snapshot of a point in time, representing something that no longer exists. If a map were to represent the territory with perfect fidelity, it would no longer be a reduction and thus would no longer be useful to us. ThatвЂ™s because they are reductions of what they represent. Stick with it, and youвЂ™ll find that your ability to understand reality, make consistently good decisions, and help those you love will always be improving. To help you build your latticework of mental models so you can make better decisions, weвЂ™ve collected and summarized the ones weвЂ™ve found the most useful.ДЄnd remember: Building your latticework is a lifelong project. YouвЂ™ve got to hang experience on a latticework of models in your head.вЂќ You may have noticed students who just try to remember and pound back what is remembered. And youвЂ™ve got to array your experience both vicarious and direct on this latticework of models. If the facts donвЂ™t hang together on a latticework of theory, you donвЂ™t have them in a usable form. In a famous speech in the 1990s, Charlie Munger summed up the approach to practical wisdom through understanding mental models by saying: вЂњWell, the first rule is that you canвЂ™t really know anything if you just remember isolated facts and try and bang вЂ™em back. Sharing knowledge, or learning the basics of the other disciplines, would lead to a more well-rounded understanding that would allow for better initial decisions about managing the forest.

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None are wrong, but neither are any of them able to describe the full scope of the forest. When a botanist looks at a forest they may focus on the ecosystem, an environmentalist sees the impact of climate change, a forestry engineer the state of the tree growth, a business person the value of the land.

If weвЂ™re only looking at the problem one way, weвЂ™ve got a blind spot. By putting these disciplines together in our head, we can walk around a problem in a three-dimensional way. A biologist will think in terms of evolution. A psychologist will think in terms of incentives. By default, a typical Engineer will think in systems. Each specialist sees something different. Instead of a latticework of mental models, we have a few from our discipline. It turns out that when it comes to improving your ability to make decisions variety matters. The more models you have-the bigger your toolbox-the more likely you are to have the right models to see reality. The quality of our thinking is proportional to the models in our head and their usefulness in the situation at hand. We cannot keep all of the details of the world in our brains, so we use models to simplify the complex into understandable and organizable chunks. Mental models are how we simplify complexity, why we consider some things more relevant than others, and how we reason.ДЄ mental model is simply a representation of how something works. Not only do they shape what we think and how we understand but they shape the connections and opportunities that we see. Mental models are how we understand the world. The Great Mental Models Volumes One and Two are out.

Building a Latticework of Mental Models.

By the time youвЂ™re done, youвЂ™ll think better, make fewer mistakes, and get better results. This guide explores everything you need to know about mental models.

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