"Mental Models" is a wonderful rebranding of plain old wisdom and experience.
" The next helpful model is relativity, adapted from the laws of physics. This model is about remembering that everyone’s perspective is different from yours. "
The only mental model at play here is the idea that your mind benefits from mental models and that we need an easily-referenced ontology of models brought to us in blog posts.
It's just not a great article. Farnam Street is popping up on HN all the time these days. They had one article a while back which I liked enough to add their RSS feed to my reader (can't remember which one), but to be frank, I think everything I've read from that site since then has disappointed, and I've since removed them.
Seriously, there is no value to internalizing a rule like "think the same way that the theory of general relativity would." It doesn't even make sense. This is low grade pop psych.
When passions are running high, the first thing you should do before making decisions is cool down. You don't need a novel mental model you just need to take a break and wait for everyone's emotions (and the accompanying stress hormones, which suppress rational thinking) to subside. That's a better mental model than anything in this article.
I seems like a clickbait title with vapid, filler content using HN as an advertising platform. If it sinks to the depths of terrible, flagging it at the top is a possible response.
Yeah it's hard to understand the point - like, other parents were upset because their children were exposed to mold and asbestos, but I, being enlightened, deconstructed their worries through innumerable "mental models" to demonstrate and convincingly argue that actually our children being exposed to mold and asbestos has not yet been proven to be harmful or negligent.
Even granting the argument, I wonder why just staying home from a raucous school meeting - as the vast majority of parents do - wouldn't be an easier way to "stay calm". Beyond that the author provided no actual data/evidence to support his conclusion that the "potentially harmful" leak in fact wasn't.
What's the mental model for recognizing a huckster company hocking to HN a mental model "learning community" for $150-250/year that promises to "repeatedly invite me to expand how I see and think. The level of IQ and EQ members offer is unprecedented and has me visiting daily"[1]
First thing, try to defuse it with humor. It's free unless the IRS gets wind of you practicing unlicensed silliness.
If you want to stay calm in a high-risk situation, try tactical breathing first.[0] Worry about playing with "mental models" second.
Another technique soldiers use in war is to assume they are dead until the war ends. It's much less stressful and more survivable. Also, there's no point worrying about things that are actually far beyond one's own control.
Another point to consider is the calmest individual typically has the most power in an interaction and has the advantage of clearest thinking.
I tried to look at it from the writers perspective and lost most of my humor in the process. Let me try describe the feeling in a way you could understand..... I felt an overwhelming emptiness inside and thought, this must be what daemons feel like after the exorcism. (just trying not to have my malice misinterpreted as incompetence here)
If I see people lacking the strength (both mentally and physically) to accomplish something I always suggest screaming as loud as you can. There is nothing as funny as leaving the room to scream in the hallway. Preferably loud enough that everyone inside the room can hear it.
While it was b.. bad, I really enjoyed the article and the author is right. It is important to teach other people see things from my perspective.
I was also thinking, these mental models are good as a checklist of sorts that you can only apply when you're calm. Getting to the calm state first is what's difficult.
Not assuming malice in general is probably the only helpful thing in there to stay calm.
Tactical breathing (I never knew it was called that) helps me, too.
Even something that simple can be difficult to apply in the heat of the moment, that's why the technique has to be as simple as "just inhale and exhale slowly". Everything moderately complex won't help.
I had never heard that the "assume you're already dead" tactic was used by anyone.
I can vouch that it works, I was born with several heart defects and spent so much time as a child and through my early 20s going in to surgeries and procedures with uncertain outcomes that being "already dead" has been my thing, a kind of "I was born already dead" mental headspace, I still think that way effectively 100% of the time and as a result I'm pretty hard to be derailed by mundane problems, fears and slights that seem to get under the skin of others.
I wonder why they don't continue that mindset when they get home, I wonder if any military psychologists have identified downsides? A few different periods of my life I've gone to therapists and they don't seem to know care about that headspace once they carefully confirmed that I'm neither suicidal or a high risk taking individual.
If you thought it was contentious before, just wait until you start lecturing everyone about how they suck at thinking... That's sure going to improve the emotional situation.
It helps you think clearly even when everyone around you isn't. And it helps you empathize with, and therefore communicate better with, the people around you.
Logical fallacies don't have to be directly stated (unless you're talking to people who can think like adults).
You can simply use them as a shortcut to strategies that are likely to work. If someone is making a slippery slope argument, then you can use a standard slippery slop reply.
In my experience a lot of slopes are slippery, and a lot of people who cry "slippery slope" are disingenuous; they know the slope is slippery and they want to slide down.
As to why slopes are slippery, it may be that it's easy and natural to build political alliances advocating for either side of it, but hard to build an alliance advocating for the middle.
I’ve noticed that some people will watch for certain patterns and strings and then just react with some kind of pattern that they fill in the blanks to rather than applying reason.
When they’re not talking to you and not getting emotional it’s just obnoxious but when they’re angry and you have to deal with it there isn’t much worse.
the reason for being upset is primarily the person being upset not being in charge of their emotions and getting mentally trapped in a situation.
most important is probably the observation that one cannot control their environment and that anger isn't really helpful in any circumstance other than running away from a tiger or something, so if you get upset just take a few breaths and get a coffee.
I'm not sure how much the mental models mentioned in the article help because I've come to the conclusion that getting upset is primarily a biological thing. It's much more simple I think than people often suggest.
That's fine. Let's all forgive drunk drivers, they just want to get home, no matter how much carnage they cause. It's a stupid phrase that enables all sorts of black stupidity.
You've taken it a half-step too far, but yes; if you assume that drunk drivers are, in fact, not setting out to comment manslaughter, then you can see what causes it and push for taxis/uber and actually get people off the road. Or you can assume malice, demonize them and end up like MADD.
" The next helpful model is relativity, adapted from the laws of physics. This model is about remembering that everyone’s perspective is different from yours. "
The only mental model at play here is the idea that your mind benefits from mental models and that we need an easily-referenced ontology of models brought to us in blog posts.