Ask HN: Which books teach mental models?
Read the piece by Mutaschak[1] yesterday and found myself agreeing with components of the piece but distinctly feeling that some well-crafted books take a more active role in conveying and teaching mental models than simply summarized facts (which can be done well, but is subject to being forgotten).
The question, then, is what books effectively introduced a new mental model or perspective?
Two recent examples from my own reading, non-fiction and fiction:
Loonshots (Bahcall) - model & "rules" for structure of innovation in orgs is introduced, discussed from various perspectives, examples given, summarized in text, repeated.
Overstory (Powers) - character stories all reinforce the perspective of an alternative relationship with trees and plants, the giant ecosystem and systems thinking.
[1] https://andymatuschak.org/books/
97 comments
[ 3.8 ms ] story [ 183 ms ] threadSuch a small shift in perspective, but it makes such a dramatic difference! Really recommend reading if you haven't already.
It grew out of https://medium.com/@yegg/mental-models-i-find-repeatedly-use....
I would suggest starting there.
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.
Maybe each chapter is a different author.
I think mental model first learning would be a lot faster. Each git command can be explained in the mental model rather than as a stand-alone thing.
You could probably sum each one up in 10 pages or less. No code, no commands, just diagrams and a good explqination.
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.
> Donella Meadows remained a pioneer of environmental and social analysis until her untimely death in 2001.
That’s sad
* Seeking Wisdom: From Darwin to Munger
* The Model Thinker: What You Need to Know to Make Data Work for You
* The Great Mental Models
Open Source Software Licensing by Rosen is another. It identifies two broad categories of open source licenses and shows how various licenses fit into each.
These two books gave me a framework for thinking about large areas that had until I read them been quite confusing. They turn a chaotic jumble of special cases into a simple framework for forming hypotheses and making predictions.
Introduces https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recognition_primed_decision It really resonated with me.
2) Thinking and Deciding by Jonathan Baron. Quite thorough and comprehensive.
3) There are also books on "TRIZ"(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRIZ) a technique for problem solving, which arose from the former Soviet Union.
“Principles” by Ray Dalio gives a mesh of models that Ray has learnt or improved.
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.
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.
There are people out there who have done all that work for you. All you have to do is pick up a book, learn their models, then stand on their shoulders as you develop your own.
It maybe less efficient, but in my experience, practice has consistently been the most effective way to learn something.
If you're looking for efficient, then you'd want a well-structured mix of theory and practice.
> All you have to do is pick up a book, learn their models, then stand on their shoulders as you develop your own.
Rarely does this work for any complex topic. I can't imagine learning math, or languages, or coding by simply picking up books. IMO, these models are very similar -- they have a ton of depth that can't be internalized without practice.
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.
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 ;-)
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.
For this reason I find the OP’s follow-up somewhat—misguided? Seems like he needs to pick a topic and do some research. Unless we’re just talking about our favorite books, which is basically what the thread has become. And I love it.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Threshold_model
https://blog.usejournal.com/effort-neglect-and-the-second-te...
P.S. I am not part of “Journal,” and don’t use it. One of their people reached out to me and asked if I’d submit my piece to their publication.
Learning about the number of calories in everything, and reading research that said the whole "low fat" movement wasn't useful, was what finally helped me lose weight.
Reading about the best ways to exercise helped me train effectively.
So maybe I do need to read more books about the brain.
[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.
If you are outside the USA, probably the kindle edition will be cheaper.
# 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.
To that, I would add Metamagical Themas by Douglas Hofstader & Prometheus Rising by Robert Anton Wilson. (Wilson gets a little hippieish, but he does a better job of knocking down unjustified tunnel-vision than Hofstader or Dennett do.)
... read and skim it quite a few times and it's super nice and quick to use.
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..