The Great Mental Models
Shane Parrish
Summary
From the founder of the Knowledge Project, one of the best podcasts out there, Shane describes first principles across multiple disciplines and how to use first-principles decision making in your own life
Rating: 4/5
Notes
When you learn to see the world as it is and not as what you want it to be, everything changes
‘Nothing has yet been said that’s not been said before’ - Publius Terentius
‘I believe in the discipline of mastering the best of what other people have figured out.’ - Charlie Munger
You must be open to new perspectives to understand the consequences of your actions
‘Most geniuses prosper not by deconstructing intricate complexities but by exploiting unrecognized simplicities’ - Andy Beoit
Multidisciplinary thinking leads to better models, which means better thinking
You can’t really know anything if you just remember isolated facts and say them back
Put your mental models like a latticework. Learning one discipline is just one piece of the bigger puzzle
Using and failing as you acknowledge, reflect and learn from it is how you build your mental model repertoire
When the ways of the world seem less mysterious, you gain confidence in how you navigate it and than turns into a more successful life
The map of reality is not reality. It’s a mixture of a dynamic always moving terrain and you have to better understand the terrain
‘What is common to many is least taken care of, for all men have greater regard for what is their own rather than for what they possess in common w/ others.’ - Aristotle
When thinking about maps, remember:
- Reality is ultimate update
- Consider the cartographer
- Maps can influence territories
- Remember that a map captures a territory at a moment in time
- Maps are not objective creations: they reflect values, standards and limitations of their creators
When ego and not competence drives what we do, we have blind spots
Building a circle of feedback requires curiosity/desire to learn, monitoring and feedback
Defer all major spending until you’ve looked on the internet
Always think from first principles: take something apart, test your assumptions about it, reconstruct it and see what happens
Socractic questioning:
- Clarify your thinking on the origins of ideas (why do I think this)
- Challenge assumptions (How do I know this is true?)
- Look for evidence (how can I back this up)
- Consider alternative perspectives (how do I know I’m correct)
- Examining consequences and implications (what if I’m wrong)
- Question the original question (why did I think about that?)
To improve something, you need to know why it was successful or not
Thought experiments are extremely useful exercises
Necessity does not equal sufficiency. Just because you’re good at sports does not make you a professional athlete
Always consider second-order consequences: thinking farther ahead and holistically
- What are the unintended consequences going to be?
Develop trust for future success: going for immediate payout in our interactions w/ people guarantees an interaction will be a one off
By delaying gratification now, you will save time in the future
Mary Wollstonecraft from the 18th century started feminism in ‘A vindication of the rights of a woman’
Balance second order thinking with sound judgement and practicality
Bayesian thinking: using all relevant prior info in making decisions
Predicting the future is impossible but you can prepare
Learn how to fail properly: by failing more often, you’re learning more and less vulnerable to the volatility of the world
Correlation does not equal causation
Inversion: turn your thinking upside down. Look at it backwards instead of forward
- If you invert a problem, what else would have to be true for it to work?
Instead of selling a product or service, sell a new behaviour/way of behaving
- Instead of thinking how can I win, think about how not to lose
Ocean’s razor: simpler explanations are more likely to be true than complicated ones
When you see something you don’t like and seems wrong, we assume it’s intentional. But it’s more likely it was completely unintentional
Vasili Arkipov saved the world from nuclear disaster in 1962
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How the World Works
Noam Chomsky
Summary
A combination of books Chomsky wrote in the 80s and 90s about America and it's role in the world. Fascinating read and insight into one of the great thinkers of the 21st century
Rating: 5/5
Notes
The US invaded Greece in 1947 and supported a horrendous war which led to 160k Greek deaths. This was the model for Vietnam and allowed American business to gain and thrive
US policies in the 3rd world consistently opposed democracies if they couldn’t be controlled as real democracies believe government should respond to the needs of their own population rather than those of US investors
US-run contra forces in the 3rd world isn’t ordering killing - it’s brutal sadistic torture (Nicaragua, El Salvador, Guatemala)
From the Bolshevik revolution in 1917 till the collapse of the communist governments in eastern europe in the 80s, it was possible to justify every US attack as defense against the Soviets
If you want a global system that’s subordinated to the needs of US investors, you can’t let pieces of it wander off. It’s clearly stated in the documents of record
The US wants ‘stability’ meaning security for the upper classes and large foreign businesses
Solid case for impeaching every American president since World War 2 either outright as war criminals or involved in serious war crimes
El Salvador and Nicaragua were not covered by the US media in the 70s when US-supported brutal torture and murder were taking place
In the early 80s, America’s friends slaughtered 10s of thousands of Guatemalans with countless others tortured and raped
After Vietnam, the major US policy goal has been to maximize repression and suffering of countries demonstrated by their violence - blocked other countries from seeking aid
The US regularly carries out or supports aggression
For most of the 20th century, the US was the dominant economic power and used economic warfare as a weapon ranging from illegal embargoes to enforcement of weak IMF rules with their military becoming pre-eminent
The US tries to avoid negotiations with countries as the US fears it will lose and other countries will be better off
When a state has huge debts, it must divert the population from what’s happening and they do this by inspiring fear of our enemies (Russia in Europe)
The real enemy of the US has always been ‘the poor who seek to plunder the rich’. In America, it’s the opposite and has been for generations
‘The war on drugs’ was a manufactured media blitz by the US leadership to distract the population, increase repression in inner cities and build support for attack on civil liberties
The US government blocks international effort to seek peace (Russia and Ukraine)
Major media are large companies owned and interlinked with even larger conglomerates. The market is the advertisers and the product is audiences
The power in the US lies in the hands of people who determine investment decisions as they determine production, distribution and staff the government. They want a passive, quiescent population
The struggle of freedom is never over and requires active and sustained efforts
One important consequence of globalization is it extends the third world model to industrial nations where the average person has their jobs shipped away while the rich and elite continue to amass massive amounts of wealth
We’ve moved to an international state with the IMF, World Bank, G7 & EU, WEF where the general population doesn’t know what’s happening and it doesn’t know it doesn’t know
If the borrowing the US has done was used for constructive purposes like investment or infrastructure, the US would be better off, but it was used to enrich the rich - for consumption, financial manipulation and speculation which are all harmful
The class warfare of the last few decades has successfully weakened popular organizations leaving people to feel isolated
The US is so deeply in debt to the international financial community because of debt that they have a lock on US policy
Many of the large number of security council resolutions vetoed by the US have to do with Israeli aggression or atrocities
Invaders typically use local collaborators to run things for them by playing upon existing rivalries to get onne group to work for them against another
European wars were wars of extermination. If we were to be honest about history, we would simply describe it as barbarian invasion
There has always been racism but it developed as a leading principle of thought in the context of colonialism.
A standard technique of belief formation goes along with oppression
In the US, you’re not allowed to talk about the class differences, which is the real issue
When the US establishment talks about jobs, it means profits for its corporations
The elite are masters and they follow what Adam Smith said about ‘the vile maxim’ - all for ourselves and nothing for anyone else
People who aren’t owners and investors have nothing much to say in the US
Jefferson warned against banking institutions and corporations and said if they grow, aristocrats would’ve won and the revolution would’ve been lost
The ‘Free market’ is for the poor. We have a dual system - protection for the rich and market discipline for everyone else
There’s been a considerable increase in inequality and has the American society moving towards a third world model, thereby seeing increased crime and signs of social disintegration
A huge area of the media is dedicated to diverting people and making them more stupid and passive
There’s nothing individualistic about corporations who are totalitarian in nature
Free trade agreements result in reduced wages for local employees while predominantly benefiting the rich consumer while also destroying unions
Operation Paper Clip imported large number of known Nazi criminals
The American army’s counter-insurgency literature begins with an analysis of the German experience in Europe written with the co-operation of Naxi officials (instruments of statecraft - book)
US involvement in Chile with the coup in 1973 to reduce social democracy
The threat of a good empire is what the US worried about with reforms on uncontrolled capitalism
The US killed a few million people and destoryed 3 countries during the Vietnam war
A huge amount of business propaganda is to create wants
The answers to solve all these issues is to organize. Being alone you can’t do anything but if you join with other people, you can make changes
Under capitalism, investment is supposed to be as risk free as possible. No competition wants free markets - what they want is power
The government subsidizes corporations’ costs, protects them from market risks and lets them keep the profits
There’s never been much difference between the 2 business parties and the differences are disappearing
The CIA has been involved in drug running for generations (the politics of heroin book)
You need something to frighten people with, to prevent them from paying attention to what’s really happening to them. You have to engender fear and hatred
The first world lives in a highly indoctrinated society
Neoliberalism is nothing more than the imperial formula: free markets for you and plenty of protection for me. The rich would never accept it but they’re happy to impose it on the poor
The UN does mostly what US business wants
‘Politics is the shadow cast on society by big business’ - John Devery
If people dedicate themselves to organizing and activism, we’ll gain access to broader audiences
If you extrapolate to the future, it’s very ugly but the point is it’s not inevitable. It can be changed but we can’t change things till we understand them.
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