Category: Mental Models
-
+
+
+
+
+
+
Predicting is hard, especially the future, as Yogi Berra supposedly pointed out. But it is interesting – but not necessarily for the reasons we originally think. Predicting the future is interesting not because you want to find out if you are right, but you want to use the predictions you…
-
+
+
+
+
+
+
Is String theory true? Has Latin America seen a political polarization in the last ten years? Is a keto-oriented diet dangerous for your heart? The only reasonable answer to these questions – for the absolut majority of us – is that we do not know. If you are a physicist…
-
It is fair to say that playing video games have a number of positive cognitive and attentional effects (see this metastudy of 116 different papers), but one thing that is rarely highlighted is the fact that video games in some cases offer mental models that can be applied cross domains…
-
This article discusses a subject that increasingly has caught my interest: what is a good explanation? This is an old question in philosophy – and deciding that something is an explanation of some fact or phenomenon is not as straightforward as it seems. Explanations can operate at different levels and…
-
+
+
+
+
+
+
“What are the defunct meso-facts that hold your organization hostage?”
-
+
+
+
+
+
+
One of the things that we hear all the time is that everything is accelerating. It is the core theme of everyday commentary on politics, but also a seriously treated idea in the works of philosophers like Hartmut Rosa or Paul Virilio. This acceleration is described, at least in Rosa’s…
-
+
+
+
+
+
+
A useful way to think about problem solving is to think about the diagnosis or description of the problem as coming in different resolutions. And here it is important to remember that it is not always helpful to aim for higher resolution – since what you gain may not be…
-
+
+
+
+
+
+
When looking at any phenomenon, our instinct is often to think about it as linear or exponential – and when we draw curves those are the ones that most readily come to mind. But there is a class that let’s us think differently and could be useful to apply in…
-
In understanding organisations, one of the core questions you should ask yourself is what capabilities an organisation has. What can it do routinely and well? This is no simple question, and a good way to approach it is to ask what an ideal type organisation should be able to do…