Published on 17th November, 2024
Notes on Superthinking: The Big Book of Mental Models
Why this Book?
There are hardly courses on mental models in any school curriculum despite they pervasive nature in every day life hence it is essential to seek and learn mental models out side of school. This books helps you create of over 300 metal models as your loyal soldiers always ready to get ready for action to help you reason with situation. Surprises, Risk, Decisions etc.
I got to know of this book through my mentor yaw - add bluesky link - It was one of our sessions of TopRank. I was explaining to yaw how at some point, I decided to think the opposite of what every one was thinking. An example would be, you see those situations where a solution is needed and people are called in to solve it? So if this person fails, the next person gets called to "try your luck". Through observation - thanks to reading Sherlock Holmes (write about this later)- I realized that my peers would usually do the same damn thing or a very slightly tweaked variant of what the person prior did. Taking a lesson from Albert Eisntein when he said "You can't solve a problem when the same mindset that created it" - get the exact quote -, I decided to always go a 180 degree angle and approach the problem from there. As a "technique that I devised to help me solve problems", I admit that I haven't used it as much as I would have loved to, that is not to say it is not effective because I have been surprised several times by how it actually helped me solve real problems so I have always kept it dear to my heart and that is how come I was explaining it to yaw. Yaw gave me a refinement me of the Idea and infact he told me it had a name and that it was called lateral thinking and it fell under a broader category called Mental Models. He recommended this book for me to read. This was 2 years ago but I am now reading now - there is always so much to read - and I hope to add the over 300 mental models in this book to my toolbox, just like I knew lateral thinking without even knowing its name, there are other mental models that the book talks about that I am familiar with but regardless I hope to learn more about them.
What are Mental Models?
They are reccurring themes/ideas across several disparate subjects thet gives you an insight into better understanding, explaining, predicting a situation. There are like fundamental truths that appear in several disparate subjects. Once you are familiar with them, you can use them to create a mental picture of a situation to help you reason on how deal with the situation.
What is Superthinking?
Even though Metal Models can be fundamental reasonings across disparate subjects, They often originate from specific disciplines like Physics, Computer Science or Psychology etc. Amongst these mental models, there are some that are wildly useful across several other disciplines. Understanding them gives you a leg up in developing understanding across disparate disciplines. These very wildly-applicable-to-wildly-varied disciplines are called super models. Using these regularly is termed as superthinking, the ability to think about the world better. Now that you know about Mental Models, Super Models and the super power that they give you - superthinking, I encourage you to learn them, regularly apply them to make better decisions.
Summary
1. Super models are a shortcut to higher-level thinking: like knowing multiplication and using it instead of using addition only to achieve multiplication, because you only know about addition.
2. You need to know Super models well enough so you can develop an intuition on where and when to use them effectively.
3. Super models are a toolbox to have. You need to learn to use the right tool for the right situation and to be able to do that, you kinda need to have a toolbox full of tools(super models), right? yeah, right.
4. Super models help you not use what you know to try to solve everything. Maslow's hammer.
5. Knowing super models in like having your first super powers like a hero, you need to learn to master super models and that will make you a super hero then.
6. Apply inverse/lateral thinking to be wrong less.
7. Study and seek out unforced errors in your life and weed them out.
8. Antifragile - get better, like they say what doesn't kill you makes you stronger - If your thinking is antifragile, then it gets better over time as you learn from your mistakes and interact with your surroundings
Conclusion
"Learning to apply super mental models in this manner doesn’t happen overnight. Like Spider-Man or the Hulk, you won’t have instant mastery of your powers. The superpowers you gain from your initial knowledge of these mental models must be developed. Reading this book for the first time is like Spider-Man getting his spider bite or the Hulk his radiation dose. After the initial transformation, you must develop your powers through repeated practice. When your powers are honed, you will be like the Hulk in the iconic scene from the movie The - link to scene - When Captain America wants Bruce Banner (the Hulk’s alter ego) to turn into the Hulk, he tells him, “Now might be a really good time for you to get angry.” Banner replies, “That’s my secret, Captain. . . . I’m always angry.” - Superthinking