Saturday, June 4, 2022
We are all finding our way through blind spots and in life, the person with the fewest blind spot wins. Removing blind spot means we see, interact with, and move closer to understanding reality. We think better, and thinking better leads to finding solutions from multiple dimensions. This is what wisdom is. The skill for finding the right solutions for the right problems.
This is a first part of the Mental Models series on The Passion Pad. In the upcoming weeks, I’ll be covering some well known mental models that have done wonders for people in life.
What are mental models and why do we need them?
Mental Models describe the way the world works. They shape how we think, and how we form beliefs. Most of the times we are not even aware of them but we are actually using them. They operate under the surface. They are how we infer causality, match patters, and draw analogies. Long back I wrote a post on how analogies fuel power to our problem solving. Check that out here, it is one of my most favourite post.
We cannot underestimate the role of “chance“ in our lives. There is no system that can prepare us for all the risks. There are complexities in life which are entirely unpredictable. Having a repertoire of mental models can help us minimise risks by understanding the forces that are at play.
What we need is multidisciplinary thinking, the ability to look at the problem from different perspectives without any bias, so as to come up with the most optimal solution. This is what mental models teach us. When understanding is separated from reality, we lose our powers. Understanding must constantly be tested against reality and updated accordingly. Pontificating with friends over a dinner is fun, but what matters is execution.
The problem with us as humans is we get in our own way. It is hard to understand reality as part of the system because we have blind spots. We can’t see what we aren’t looking for, and don’t notice what we don’t notice.
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 water?” And the two young fish swam on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes “What the hell is water?”
~ David Foster Wallace
Our failure to discourse from reality spring because of three things -
Not having the right perspective: If you are a physics student, chances are you probably know what perspective is and might have heard about Newton. Consider you are traveling in a bus and it moving with a constant speed up north. You drop a ball onto the floor of the bus. To you, it looks like as if the ball is dropping straight down, confirming the existence of gravity. Now imagine you are a tree, watching the bus moving with a constant speed. For you as a tree, you are able to see a vertical change in the position of the ball, as well as a horizontal change. This example shows the limits of our perception. We must be open to other perspectives if we truly want to understand the results of our actions. Despite feeling that we have got all the information, if we are in a bus, the tree standing tall on the roadside has something more to tell us.
Ego induced denial: There’s one easy way to always be right. Stop taking feedbacks from others. Many of us are so invested in our ideas and beliefs that we stop seeking the outside feedback. We are so afraid about what others will say about us that we fail to put our ideas out there and subject them to criticism. Even is we put our ideas out and they are criticised, ego steps in to protect us. Instead of improving, our interest lies in defending.
Distance from the consequence of our decision: When you put your hand over a stove, you quickly get aware of the reality and your decisions and pull your hand immediately. You pay the price of your decision immediately. However, the further we are from the feedback of the decisions, the easier it is to convince ourselves that we are right and avoid the challenge, the pain of updating our views.
In the upcoming weeks, we will discuss some well known mental models and discuss how to use them. Remember, not every model is useful, some are deeply flawed. Some models can be used in one situations while others cannot. The name of the game we are playing is “Understanding Reality” and the objective is to come out as a smarter human being.
See you next Saturday with our first mental model, until then have a great weekend :)
Cheers!
A FEW THINGS KEEPING ME AWAKE
Article: How To Name a Baby? by Tim Urban
Video: How Did The Enigma Machine Work?
Song I am listening to: Best of KK
Thought of the week: "Nothing has yet been said that's not been said before."
MEME OF THE WEEK
SARCASTIC REFLECTION
Here are the last three posts if you were too occupied to read them -