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2/ It’s easy to misapply a mental model, and because it’s a mental shortcut, you usually won’t even catch the error until you get feedback from the real world that your choice of mental model was wrong
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3/ I’ve made this mistake. For a long time throughout my 20s, I rigorously applied the mental model of rationality in many of my interactions. But, of course, I now know people are irrational and emotional most of the times.
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6/ A meta mental model is a mental shortcut to help you choose and apply the right mental model, specific to your goals and surrounding context. Here’s the one I’ve started using.
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7/ "Descriptive" mental models tell us how things are while “normative” make recommendations by telling us how things should be. Rationality is normative while loss aversion is descriptive.
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8/ "Broad" mental models can be applied to more than one type of phenomena. "Specific" mental models can be applied to only one specific type of phenomenon. The 80/20 rule is broad while Porter’s five forces analysis is specific.
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9/ "Research backed" are the ones you find scientific support on. "Experience backed" is, well, someone’s experience. Getting 100 people to love you is experience backed while you can’t know more than 150 people socially is research backed I prefer research backed mental models
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11/ The meta mental model is a new, untested idea that I’m kicking around. So if you find it useful, let me know. I’ll keep iterating on it. More details on my blog: invertedpassion.com/meta-mental-mo Also, consider sending this thread to someone who uses mental models a lot.
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