Ask HN: What mental models do you use everyday?
I use this mental model called 'Play to your strengths'. It's more a saying than a model, but a model nonetheless. Anyways it has helped me build great things, since I can only ever build on strength. I fix my weaknesses where I can, but I don't pay my weaknesses too much attention.
There's this whole cult about 'fixing' yourself, and seminars galore by 'successful people' who want you to mimic their behaviors so you can be 'successful' too, so I avoid this groupthink.
What other little sayings do you repeat to yourself or what other mental models do you employ daily?
287 comments
[ 3.9 ms ] story [ 290 ms ] thread"Good enough, is good enough".
C'mon, we're all dying here.
Finishing is a skill (per Derek Yu).
All measuring devices have noise.
Symmetry and continuity impart incredibly strong constraints on systems.
A dollar isn't worth a dollar to everyone.
I am probably overreacting or missing something.
Most of the value can be had by delivering less than 100%.
Many problems cannot be solved, simply changed into other problems.
If my team succeeds then I succeed.
If a system has to operate the same way under rotation/reflection, that strongly constrains what the system can be doing. Think crystals or isotropic forces or, in the day job, what should happen if you negate a feature going into a neutral network then retrain. Should it matter from which perspective you look at a thing?
If a system is continuous then smooth changes to inputs should cause smooth changes to outputs. The system probably will be robust to small perturbations because they will result in small output changes.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turbulence#Kolmogorov.27s_th... is something of an example.
What does this mean?
Time is a finite resource for everyone. Savor it. And, respect the time of others.
I've also heard "it's better to finish something than to start something." At the same time, don't fall for the sunk cost fallacy. Finishing a dead idea only makes you feel good.
Well, that's a mouthful.
Closely related is the concept of conditional probability - how does the probability of something change as you include other information.
It takes some studying to understand probability theory well, but it is very powerful once you start to think that way. Most of the garbage science reporting in the media would be fixed if reporters actually thought this way and honestly applied it.
If it disagrees with experiment, it’s wrong. In that simple statement is the key to science.
Most people are average at their jobs. If they were really good at them, they’d have better jobs.
This saved me so much time dwelling on yak-shaving and premature optimization.
law of diminishing returns (the logarithmic curve)
you don't know as much as you think (dunning-kruger effect)
* Don't lie to the person in the mirror. Accept your shortcomings as they are.
* Having few good work partners is better than a dozen work friends.
* Trust is non-negotiable & irreparable.
* Always have a plan B if you want to complete something.
* Always remember Plan B shouldn't become your Plan A by default - stay ambitious.
* No question is a bad question - (sometimes questioning the status quo makes a big dent)
Also, something I always cherish from my advisor (translated from his native Japanese):
"You relish your sucess when your mind is paired with immense hardwork, dogged determination, indomitable grit and the acceptance of possible failure at each step of the way. Achievements are divine but it makes us better humans to understand the journey, not the destination"
On the other hand, I must live in the present. Thinking about the future makes me stressed, and thinking about the past makes me angry.
So I experience the present while working on the future I desire.
There are basic concepts in CBT that really helps, like learning that bad mode is like a wave, you need to learn how to work through it. https://clip.cafe/batman-gotham-knight-2008/are-in-pain-s1 - sorry, just kidding.
Also trying to dig deeper into the reasons that cause your dysfunctionality, I mean the unconscious reasons.
And there are some congnitive distortions that are common, knowing them is very useful.
I don't like self-help books, but after going through a lot of them, I found two that are good: "Feeling Good", and "Rewire _ Change Your Brain to Break Bad Habits, Overcome Addictions, Conquer Self-Destructive Behavior"
Kiss priniciple https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/KISS_principle
2. create following the rules
3. break the rules
The groupings of the finest emotions within the 2nd group are immensely helpful... for instance, "successful" and "confident" are in the proud category. And to feel successful, first trust in your own ability, then work for others and when they trust in your abilities too, you are successful.
Respected and valued are in the same subcategory. To feel respected, first value something, and if you can get an employee to value the same thing, then they truly respect you.
On the anger side, disrespected and ridiculed are in the same subcategory, and they are similar, but disrespected is when someone devalues your orders, and ridiculed is when they make fun of your form(body).
On the sad side, isolated and abandoned are grouped, isolated is when you're sad for being taken out of something(a group or a feeling), and abandoned is when you and the rest remain, but a person leaves it.
I've been reprocessing my whole life with finer emotional granularity, and I recommend it, highly so!
Or, more broadly:
- There is "what happened," and there is "the meaning you assign to what happened," and crucially, _they are not the same thing._
This one lesson underlies virtually every mindfulness and personal development practice in the world.
There is also a funny video you can share with people to explain the same idea: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U-9Gci8MuHw
For example, all lives matter, sounds good, but what is the intent behind that? Is it really to signal that all lives matter?
Alternatively we can look at the effects of an action. To use your example, when someone says “all lives matter” it, among other things, alienates black people. IMO makes it a lot more clear cut.
Also known as Brahman vs Maya:
https://www.yogapedia.com/brahman-and-maya-an-explanation-of...
Unfortunately, since these concepts are presented through a religious lens, Maya renders many people unable to even consider (and therefore falling back to binary heuristic thinking, not realized as such) the valid neuro-scientific concepts contained within.
A simpler, secular version of the same general idea:
There are these two young fish swimming along and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says “Morning, boys. How’s the water?” And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes “What the hell is water?”
Interestingly, people tend to be very good at identifying lack of wisdom in other people (particularly the members of their outgroups), but are terrible at identifying it in themselves - the classic example is people laughing at the stupidity of Trump supporters, anti-vaxxers, etc.
However, smart people are also very vulnerable to the very same phenomenon, I think it can be seen in this thread (and you'd be hard pressed to find a group that takes thinking more seriously than Rationalists):
https://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/qz596o/why_...
Another lovely articulation of the same general idea:
Think you of the fact that a deaf person cannot hear. Then, what deafness may we not all possess? What senses do we lack that we cannot see and cannot hear another world all around us?
- Frank Herbert
Think of how stupid the average person you know is, and realize that half the population are stupider than that (another mental model I ascribe to).
By maybe 3 years old, humans figure out they can lie about their ignorance of what's generally good or bad to get away with a ton and that will be taken advantage of until some sense of accountability and honor is learned, or there's some significant threat to their personal well-being. A lot of people don't get past that stage until their late teens, but young people don't have much opportunity to do a ton damage with that mindset, they don't tend to have much power. Some people never develop the sense of accountability and go on to test the limits of their feigned ignorance until they find the lines, and walk them as close as possible. As adults, on average, they may not "succeed" as much as "smart" people, but the problem is, people like that are more likely to seek a position that allow them to get away with it, and "smart" people keep letting them off with a look of disappointment, and the assumption that they've "learned from their mistake" and won't do it again, but what they've really learned is they're not as close to the lines as they thought and go a little further next time.
I have only ever heard people say it who were either incredibly naive, or worse, malicious.
I would go so far as to say: "Never ascribe to stupidity what can reasonably be ascribed to malice."
EDIT: perhaps a clearer way of phrasing this would be "If something can reasonably be ascribed to malice, never ascribe it to stupidity"
You consider it malicious to not assume that everyone is out to get you unless proven otherwise?
Your comment was obviously malicious, but I guarantee you will now proceed to avoid responsibility by feigning ignorance. To those you wish to manipulate, particularly those without particularly good linguistic ability, your comment could work to trick them into ignoring what I said. However, to everyone else who can clearly see that isn't what I said, you will pretend to have 'simply not understood what I was saying'.
Would be interested in hearing an example from your real life that would illustrate this point a bit better, if you have the time to elaborate.
However as to my original comment at the top of the post, I was pointing out that naive people are often and easily taken advantage of by others, and those others will often "play dumb". If someone's actions can reasonably be construed as malicious, then perhaps you misunderstood their actions, but 'stupidity' is absolutely something you should never assume in this situation.
As for the part about "people who use this saying are often naive, and worse, sometimes malicious", I was pointing out that assholes tend to see good, trusting people as instead being dumb and naive, and it is in the asshole's best interest to keep them that way. It was kind of half a joke, half serious.
one of the most common tools/models I use is the Bayesian inference graph. I maintain an informal Bayesian inference graph for tons of things in my everyday experience. update it as I go along. leverage it when it applies. I suspect nearly everybody else does too, even when they do not realize it explicitly.
Less in the self-help context, more in the process context, one I often appreciate for its simplicity is this:
There are two models of reality that I find to be the most useful ones, especially when writing programs. The first is functions, and the second is sequences of states. - Leslie Lamport