The world is an extremely
complicated place.
Trying to make sense of
it, more often than not,
leads to confusion and the
acceptance of our own limitations.
That is not necessarily a bad thing.
Understanding your limitations can
make you intellectually humble.
In that state, you are more
open to alternative approaches
and more prone to the adoption
of more creative methodologies.
Notorious investor Charlie
Munger famously said:
“And so just as a man working with a
tool has to know its limitations,
a man working with his
cognitive apparatus
has to also know its limitations.”
Your biggest weapon
is self-awareness
and that includes understanding
every constituent of your selfhood.
Strengths and weaknesses.
Especially weaknesses.
Especially if you are young and
your identity is still crude.
Ten years ago, when I
was in my early 20s,
my main concern was how to
escape the incompetence
associated with my being
young and inexperienced.
Ten years later, I am here,
creating this video, having moved
from crudeness to refinement,
and attempting to
creatively elucidate
the worldly wisdom I
managed to attain.
That process wasn’t invariant,
but rather quite multifaceted.
It entailed the employment
of various models,
especially mental models,
i.e. ways to enhance your
repertoire of cognitive skills
in order to make more intelligent
and sagacious decisions.
Mental models form something
like neural latticework.
That is a mental construction
that can allow ideas
to interlace and merge
in order to offer the best solution
when complex problems arise.
You can think of a mental
model as a heuristic
that utilizes memory and intuition
in a very special and effective way.
The mental models are many.
Some are considered
common knowledge
and some quite sophisticated
and specific.
The vastness of the
latticework they produce
makes it intimidating
for one to even decide to deal
with them in the first place.
This video is an
attempt from my side
to make this process easier
and offer a primer to
the five mental models
I consider most interesting
but also most universal.
I hope that, after
grasping the concept,
you will take the time and effort
required to explore them even further
and eventually internalize them.
There is this great book by
British/American author
Simon Sinek called
“Start with Why.”
Its premise is that leaders
who want to inspire action
need to make sure that their
message is communicated
in a precise and
well-articulated manner.
When they want to move forward
and share their vision,
the fundamental element of their
message should be the “why.”
In essence, the power
of why lies in the fact
that it can evoke a
series of questions
that will allow a person to bring
more awareness to their experience
and eventually reinforce their
sense of inner purpose.
The why is the predecessor
of justification.
With the right justification, our
reasoning becomes crystallized.
We no longer operate in an
abstract and aimless fashion.
We are ready to take action.
The power of why is so potent and
its applicability so universal,
that it can eventually
morph into a mental model.
People have been using the power
of why since the ancient times
to inspire action taking
and to energize crowds.
In fact, the why model
is also a great tool
when it comes to determining
personal meaning.
For instance, psychotherapists
usually try to help people
escape their inner struggles
by attempting to raise
awareness via the why model.
The client can enter
the discovery plain,
go back in time, face
challenging events
and associate them with
current behavioral patterns.
This association gives rise to why
and eventually the person
can work towards the how.
Ivan Petrovich Pavlov was
a Russian psychologist
known for his work on
classical conditioning.
Classical conditioning is a buzzword
that refers to the procedure
during which a biological
stimulus like food,
when paired with a neutral
stimulus like a bell
can form a learning process.
During this process, the
subject, in Pavlov’s case a dog,
when it makes the association,
it manages to elicit the same
response during the neutral stimulus,
as it would during the
biological stimulus.
Pavlov’s dog, when it encountered
food, started to salivate.
After the association took place,
it started to salivate just by
listening to the sound of the bell.
The significance of this
discovery is monumental,
because we realized that it is an
enormously powerful psychological force
in the daily life of all of us.
Pavlovian Association is used
consciously and unconsciously
by various agents
in the domain of marketing and
general influence strategy.
When Coca-Cola, for instance,
decides that it wants to be associated
with great events like the Olympics,
and employ alluring
images in their ads,
you can’t help but
associate Coca Cola
with something beautiful
and enjoyable.
When Trump decided to re-utilize the
slogan “Make America Great Again,”
he seeks to create an
association with past glories
and through guileful romanticism
to evoke feelings of nostalgia
for the good old days.
The power of Pavlovian
Association lies in this effect.
Most of the work is done
at a subconscious level
and our attempt to escape
it is oftentimes fruitless.
I consider Pavlovian Association
a great mental model
for both self-awareness
and influence purposes.
Making sense of when we act or
react based on mere association
is a great way to understand concealed
aspects of our personality.
Furthermore, making sense of
when other people act or react
based on mere association
can work wonders in our
effort to influence them.
Michel Foucault focused most of
his work on power and authority
and understood clearly that power
can play a significant role
in the way people or entities
influence the fabric of society.
In my opinion, our overall
approach towards authority
can never be fully functional.
However, the eminent rise in
awareness, over the last decades,
around the topic does portend a tidal
shift towards its proper evaluation.
Bias from over-influence by authority
is fostered from a young age
and as long as the individual
surrenders, so to speak,
to authoritarian figures,
the bias will remain.
Authority creates security,
but this security is nothing more than
a substitute for emotional attachment,
which, in turn,
inhibits the ability of the individual
to cultivate self-ownership.
Bias by authority is not
necessarily a bad thing,
but it can clearly
instigate malevolent acts
if individuals don’t recognize its
effect on their decision-making.
As a contrarian,
I am not here to suggest
only politically correct
approaches to daunting issues.
I understand that
concepts like authority
constitute a gray area
in our moral landscape.
Most probably, we will never be
able to escape its omnipresence.
This is the reason I present
it as a mental model.
Becoming aware of its
ubiquitous nature
can offer a way to deal with power
in the most human way possible.
The word entropy (from Greek
entropia "a turning toward")
was invented by German
Physicist Rudolf Clausius
in 1865
in his attempt to measure the level
of disorder within a system.
Clausius was referring to
a thermodynamic system,
but, since then, the word
has been popularized
in order to explain the change
in randomness in any system.
Essentially, when entropy is high,
randomness is high within
a system and vice versa.
In colloquial language, when
people discuss entropy,
they generally attempt to paint
a picture of our chaotic world.
The realm of cosmos, as it is
interpreted by the human mind,
is a mish-mash of information
that needs to be processed.
The more complexity we
bring to the table,
the more we increase entropy.
Our attempt to control this situation
on a macro level is futile.
Entropy will keep
increasing over time
and our ability to deal
with this increase
becomes a bizarre and
far-fetched dream.
The Stoics have observed this
phenomenon hundreds of years ago
and their philosophy was
proposed as a strong antidote.
Focusing on things you can control
and ignoring the rest
is the most compelling
argument in our attempt
to control entropy, at
least on a micro level.
Steven Pinker has famously said:
“The ultimate purpose of life,
mind, and human striving
is to deploy energy and information
to fight back the tide of entropy
and carve out refuges
of beneficial order.”
This mental model becomes
more and more vital as we age
and we realize that our
survival and flourishing
is located on the nexus
between discipline,
conscientiousness, and planning.
German Mathematician Carl
Gustav Jacobi famously said:
“man muss immer umkehren,”
meaning “one needs
to always invert.”
Inversion is essentially the
ability of working backwards.
Looking at a result and
trying to guide oneself
to the initial concept
is a powerful mental model,
mainly for two reasons:
1. Thinking backwards is
oftentimes more helpful
in deconstructing a problem
than thinking forwards.
2. Pondering the ultimate consequences
of a specific course of action
can eventually make you
more grounded and calm.
The simplest way to
understand these sentences
is to think that, usually, instead of
aiming towards abstract happiness,
it is better to ensure that
we will minimize misery.
A reason, for instance,
that I admire Elon Musk
is because of his pragmatism.
Most people get star-struck
by his boldness and audacity,
 but few really recognize that
the substrate that fosters boldness and
audacity is, actually, pragmatism.
When you accept the
chances of your success,
even if those chances
are, let’s say, 10%,
you position yourself in a more
grounded and serene place.
Subsequently, when you try to
carefully identify the parameters
that may increase the
chances of success
and reduce the chances of failure,
your ability to deal with
them becomes more manageable
and your desperation morphs
into competence and confidence.
I hope that this video
worked as a great primer
to mental models and
what they represent.
There are many more mental models
to be covered and discovered
and I seriously hold the
belief that an evolved mind
needs to familiarize itself
with as many as possible.
Driven by our insatiable
hunger for self-transcendence,
we become overwhelmed by
the vastness of stimuli
that bombards our somewhat
limited cognition.
We aim for coherence, but
we get lost in abstraction.
A mental model is, essentially,
a secure pathway from
abstraction to coherence.
Hi guys, hope you
enjoyed today’s video.
If you did, please make
sure to like, subscribe,
turn on notifications,
and comment below
something cool
so that more people
can discover it.
If you want to watch more
videos from my channel,
You can check out this
one and this one.
Take care,
see you soon,
Adrian out.
