mental models [361cd08d]

Originally traced back to Jean Piaget's Theory of Cognitive Development

• www.simplypsychology.org/piaget.html

Modern usage covers:

1. Frameworks

   • Frameworks for decision making and for life

2. Thinking tools

   • Tools and techniques for thinking, sometimes "rationality" research

     • i.e. 'reasoning from first principles', 'avoiding cognitive bias', etc

3. Mental representations

   • Piaget's orginal theory, internal representations of some problem domain

     • 'tacit knowledge' vs 'explicit knowledge', or technê vs epistêmê
   • Made through experience

Descriptive models

• How people actually think (biases)

Normative models

• How people should think (probability theory)

Perscriptive models

• What is needed to get people thinking from descriptive models to normative ones

www.instapaper.com/read/1298804126

• Mental models are confined to what people communicate, true expertise is built up via experience and practition
• Framework mental models are always limited, overreliance misses signals

• Thinking tools are best applied in the original domain, and can be transferred iff the contexts are very similar

  • Note taking in Astro is applicable to note taking in finance

• Mental representations are difficult to communicate, and requires practice, emulation, or experience

  • Accents, sounding in a different language
• Mental models are not a catchall, nor are they pokemon to collect
• Is significant usefulness to thinking all things as systems, and each system has its rules. Figuring out the rules reaps the rewards.