The Great Mental Models, vol. 2 – Physics, Chemistry and Biology

I already wrote about the Great Mental Models by Farnam Street, you can read about the first volume here. The published volumes are 3. I greatly appreciate the first one, but – with all the respect for the author(s) – the other two books, however interesting and useful to increase the tools in your mind to interpret the world at micro and macro scale, seems to be a little bit “less applicable” in abstract thinking. Please don’t take me wrong: it’s just that I find them less “wide” and they require an extra-effort to generalize and to make them “fit” for the diverse circumstances. That said, I’ll try to recap here the models, adding, as usual, my personal notes between parenthesis, so you can easily understand what is NOT the author point of view, but mine. As always, I recommend you to buy and read the whole book, for a number of reasons I already wrote in similar posts – in this specific case, if you can’t find the books, you can always go to the author’s blog I already linked above.
Note: I know I’ll probably disappoint many, but the following is not intended to be the clearest way to expose concepts, it’s more or less they way I produce notes, hoping this may inspire you to do something similar when you study or read a non-fiction book.

0. Intro

In “The physics of the everyday life”, Helen Czerski tells the story of the “Fram“, a ship built after understanding that, instead of “fighting nature”, we can “accomodate” it: instead of fighting the inexorable expansion of the ice, the Fram had used it to ride across the top of the world (not the first time we get inspired for structures and materials, but also for behaviors). This is just an example of the way we can “make use” of the nature and it’s an example of usefulness of mental models after we acquire context and understanding of the situation. This book groups mental models in 3 categories: Physics, Chemistry and Biology (I assigned numbers and levels just to keep it “in order”, so you’ll see that 1.x is referring to a model about 1 that is Physics and so on).

1. Physics

“Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood. Now is the time to understand more, so that we may fear less“, Marie Curie – quoted in “Our precarious habitat” by Melvin Benarde.

1.1 Relativity

• Relativity helps us understand there’s more than just 1 PoV. That doesn’t mean that all the PoVs are equally valid, but we might not have the most complete view into a problem.
• Multiple perspectives are reality of life:
  • we see a different view through our eyes and brains
    • (For more, see books like “Deviate” by Beau Lotto)
  • when considering an eyewitness testimony during a trial, consider there are many aspects to consider in the person perspective
    • (see all the concepts explained by Watzlawick et al.)
    • (see Mandela effect, false memories, factious questions and so on)
  • different perspective (like: we can be partisans or terrorists, depending on PoVs)
• People rewrite and reshape their memories, often to fit their existing beliefs
  • (see “The Elephant in the Brain” and attempts to reduce cognitive dissonance)
• Different way to perceive and communicate (like lot of misunderstanding on ways to express our feelings, see for example “the 5 languages of love”)
• We’re not dispassionate and neutral observers
  • When you receive info, consider framing, context, and so on

1.2 Reciprocity

• Sometimes, people start giving something or behaving in some way to have chance in future to further “pretend” from us
  • (for more, see “Influence” by Robert Cialdini)
• “For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction”, Newton’s 3rd law
  • You can’t initiate force without having a force put to you
    • Same principle in some martial arts and some sports
• It would be great if everything we give, we receive another
  • (see the karma principles)
  • Quid pro quo used in nature
    • Like social grooming in monkeys (or cleaner bird in the mouth of hippos)
• Sometimes giving can even produce negative results
• There are several reasons why we can be volunteers sometimes
  • (see again “The Elephant in the Brain”)
  • (e.g.: Maslow’s top of the pyramid, contribution)
• Tit for tat
• Win/win paradigm
• “Don’t do other what you don’t want other do to you” – Confucius, Christians, etc.
• Schadenfreude
  • (see also experiments on children laughing when the bad character has bad luck, more on my post Noi e il male (fuori e dentro di noi))

1.3 Thermodynamics

• The 4 laws
  1. Zeroth Law of Thermodynamics: This law states that if two systems are in thermal equilibrium with a third system, then they are in thermal equilibrium with each other. This principle allows the definition of temperature.
  2. First Law of Thermodynamics (also known as the Law of Energy Conservation): This law states that energy cannot be created or destroyed in an isolated system. Energy can only be transferred or changed from one form to another. The first law is essentially a statement of the conservation of energy.
  3. Second Law of Thermodynamics: This law states that the entropy of a closed system will not decrease over time. It can either stay constant or increase. The second law also implies that heat energy cannot spontaneously transfer from a colder body to a warmer one.
  4. Third Law of Thermodynamics: This law states that as the temperature of a system approaches absolute zero, the entropy of the system approaches a constant minimum. This is often simplified to the notion that it’s impossible to reach absolute zero temperature.
• We would like to maintain equilibrium
  • “The physical world only has one destination: equilibrium“, Helen Czerski
  • We use thermos to keep coffee warm
  • So we build walls
    • We build and maintain walls and divisions to keep the status quo and order
      • (This clearly applies to geopolitics, internal politics and many other fields)
    • “A boundary line, as any military expert will tell you, is also a potential battle line, for a boundary line marks off the territory of 2 opposed and potentially warring camps“, Ken Wilber
• We don’t like disorder
  • As Murray Gell-Mann, Nobel laureate, said: if we’ve a coins pile and someone hit the table, it’s likely they will fall, but almost impossible to make the opposite from sparse to ordered pile
  • So we use containers, to maintain separate
• See also fairytales
  • Hero’s Journey
    • Going outside to change and come back changed
  • Enemies or bad people assaulting our village, so disrupting the order, but we put all the effort to eventually come back to the precedent state
    • (sometimes it’s for bad: see idiots that pushed back to return exactly same sh*t before CoViD-19 pandemic)

1.4 Inertia

• (For more, see also Sunk cost and status quo bias, in books like “The art of thinking clearly”)
• Momentum
  • (also known as: strike while the iron is hot… keep the momentum)
• Nuclear fission
  • (So: let the things going can lead to (un)wanted exponential reactions)
• Escape velocity, like space shuttles
  • (So: every travel begin with one step… the 2 min rule to start an activity and so on, “Eat That Frog”, and many many others)
• Energy is precious and we employ it sparingly (nature tells humans to do the less effort possible, we’re lazy animals)
  • Getting started is the hardest part, but once started is much easier to keep in motion
• The bigger the mass, the more effort required

1.5 Friction and Viscosity

• (For same concept applied, but in depth, see “Atomic Habits“, “Dopamine-nation“, “Nudge” and so on)
• Friction is a force that keep us glue against moving
• Viscosity is like the partner of friction, it keeps hard a liquid to move or to merge with others
  • Surface tension
• Example was really hard bureaucracy (see much details in the “sludge” chapter in “Nudge”) in Soviet union that made impossible to fill forms within the needed timeframe to provide social assistance or food
• (See also declutter, e.g. in many books like “Digital Minimalism” by Cal Newport, or in Meno procrastinazione, più produttività)
• Reduce frictions in organization, like Ford and Toyota cases
• (so the Lean Thinking, removing Muda, etc.), but at the same time create frictions for good against bad, to avoid/limit waste or bad habits, see also aviation and Ikea on creating friction on wrong connections between pieces

1.6 Velocity

• Not to be confused with speed: speed is movement, velocity has also direction
  • (basically: only module vs. module and direction)
• “If a man does not know what port he is steering, no wind is favorable to him“, Seneca (probably of the most cited quotes ever)
• Napoleon went further, considering also the mass – in his case, number of soldiers – to multiply the velocity, like power in mechanics
  • Kinetic and potential energy
  • But at the same, it can be an issue: if we want to adjust direction, the bigger we are, the harder it is.
    • Travel light!
• Direction is often more important than speed
  • Limit the swallow work, the point is not to be busy and fast (to nowhere or in circle), but having meaning and direction
    • (See “Getting Things Done”, Eisenhower Matrix and everything else on the topic)

1.7 Leverage

• Leverage is achieving results significantly greater than the force we put in.
  • (see also catalysts, unbalanced distributions so long illustrated in Nassim Taleb’s books, going at scale, etc.)
• The 3 kinds of physical levers…
• Leverages can be ideas, itself often amoral, is not about manipulation
  • (see again “Influence” and others)
  • E.g.: negotiation
    • (if you’re interested in the topic, you can read “Never Split the Difference”)
• Leverage is not “binary”: you can use it to have X, another one to have Y, another one X, Y and Z together
• Another example in history is combined marriage between royal families
  • (evolved now with rich and powerful/influent people, e.g.: Arnold Schwarzenegger that married a Kennedy and went easier to elections)

2. Chemistry

• “Science and everyday life cannot and should not be separated“, Rosalind Franklin

2.1 Activation Energy

• When we have activation energy, we have the energy to finish a reaction, to achieve results.
• Molecules need collisions to react; the more they have them, the more chances of having sufficient energy to produce a reaction; more in the Arrhenius equation.
• Finish what you start, sustaining and lasting changes require formation of new bonds; successful reactions may require a new way of doing things; the bigger the change we want, the more activation energy we need; evaluate internal and external environment, with features to be removed or facilitated
  • (see again “Atomic Habits” et al.)
• Examples: revolutions/reforms
• Try to reach a point of non-return, putting brakes on backsliding
  • Example: differences between Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and Philippines, Indonesia and Thailand
  • (see also different effects of money in countries like Venezuela)

2.2 Catalysts

• Catalysts accelerate change. They can’t start a reaction but can reduce time and energy required.
• They are not consumed during/after the reaction
  • They can be removed and used again
  • They can turn a reaction into a faster and cheaper production
• “Catalysis is to chemical reactions what civil engineering is to the Alps: you don’t need to cross the mountain passes to get to the Mediterranea, you can pass through the Simplon Tunnel”, Lars Ohrstroem
• Example: knowledge now, made much more accessible, faster and shareable than in the past
  • (you can read an example in my post Painless culture and life-changing skills now available for everyone)
• Example for bad: pandemic, now much faster propagation and spread. But at the same time, also medicine has improved
• Autocatalysis: processes going their own without new input
  • (perpetual motion, plus spontaneous combustion, etc.)
  • (you can benefit from some form of delegation/automation)

2.3 Alloying

• Alloying stuff (bounding/tying) can help create something new combining what already exists.
• It’s done with substances in constructions, in material science, in medicine, …
• 2+ people with different skills can combine together, in a team, much stronger than the sum of the 2 alone
• Ultimate alloying is in knowledge
  • (see “Range”)
  • Combine both wisdom/theory and practice/experiment

3. Biology

3.1 Evolution 1: Natural selection and Extinction

• This model explains success and failure, the relationship between individual and env., why is better having a plan for the continuous change
  • We change to adapt… or die
• Rafe Sagarin identified 3 elements for natural selection:
  • 1. variation between individuals
  • 2. env. conditions that favor certain variants among others
  • 3. means to reproduce those variants better suited for the env.
• Whether killed by another species or by other reasons, one species is considered extinct when there are no more individuals of the spieces
  • But its’ worth considering almost extinct when below the Allee number
  • Extinction is not to be considered itself alone, but in the context of the ecosystem
  • One cause is competition
  • (see also Malthusian theory on resources and the behavioral sink)
• Same is for a business, that must predict and adapt
  • (famous cases like Kodak and similar, see more in books like “Decisive” and “SuperForecasting”)
• Evolution of language

3.2 Evolution 2: Adaptation rate and Red Queen effect

• Adaptation depends on context
  • It’s both reaction and prediction
  • Ability to respond efficiently to a wide range of potential challenges, not only the known and predicted ones
  • Adapted are not “the best”, but the better than the competitors
• Mutations are constantly tested in the environment
• Adaptation often require to move or be pushed outside your comfort zone to other areas where you observe threats
• Some countries fail to prepare to new wars since they still think the old way, looking at enemy objects and strategies like they are the same they remember without evolution
• Least fit of a species dies first
• Red Queen hypothesis: Species must keep adapting if they want to survive
  • Like Red Queen suggested Alice to run fast if she wants to keep in the same place
  • (see many ways of thinking like “Cambiare tutto affinché nulla cambi” (“Changing everything so that nothing changes”) from Gattopardo, but also Tancredi, Dante, etc…)
• In biology, nothing change overnight, it’s a slow process, depending on how much pression env. (incl. predators) is pushing
  • But we can adapt at small scale in shorter timespan
• Usually, red queen effect is not single but combined in environment, dynamic between species
  • (see game theory and complex interacting systems)
• Success is measured by persistence
  • (it reminds me of the sentence “Non chi comincia, ma quel che persevera” (“Not the one who begins, but the one who perseveres”) on an italian military ship)
• In biology, success meaning surviving
  • In different fields, it depends: try to understand and measure your parameters of success

3.3 Ecosystem

• Community of interacting species in their nonliving env.
• When you learn about your ecosystem, you gain insight in diverse components that interacts
  • (in intelligence terms: situation awareness)
• Web/interconnection is key
  • No subsystem is stand-alone
  • Matter and energy moves across ecosystems
    • (more if you study Lavoisier)
  • Be aware of intervention bias: we can just let the env. the way we found
    • (but also beware of the opposite, status quo and lack of intervention)
• Sometimes, instead of focusing on saving a species by captivating the elements, try to re-stabilize their habitat
• Ecosystems are dynamic
• The law of the minimum, or the bottleneck
  • (or: no chain is stronger than its weaker element)
  • Be aware of the element most responsible of limiting the grow in the env.
• Closed systems tend to grow less/slowly
• The diversity of species present seems to be key for ecosystem survival
  • Same is in teams at work, with different skills

3.4 Niches

• Some species are more generalist and flexible, others are more specialized and more adapt to survive in a specific and more rigid environment
  • Both are vuln., there’s no “better” in absolute terms
  • (for technicians: see differences in general purpose and special purpose systems)
• Specialized species often has to deal with limitations of their smaller environment if they don’t want to adapt in a broader env.
  • E.g.: koalas have almost no competition for eucalyptus, but the tradeoff is that koalas have to sleep a lot since that plant doesn’t provide enough energy
  • If the environment change, they have 3 options
    • 1. Move
    • 2. Die
    • 3. Change
• Competitive exclusion principle
  • Law discovered by Gause in 1934
  • If there are 2 species competing for same resources, the one slightly better/fitter for the env. will dominate on the other species
    • See red squirrels against gray squirrels that have more efficient digestive system
• Convergence: some species, diverse each other, will eventually come to develop same common traits as a result of strategy to survive, even if coming from different origins
  • On a human level, it explains why people disconnected in different places came to same tools and same strategies
  • Same is for some concepts in math, developed similarly in different areas
    • See Kirk’s “Science and Certainty”
• Generalist faces more daily competition, but it may quickly adapt

3.5 Self-preservation

• Innate behavior, survival instinct, like reflexes that associate pain = bad, e.g.: touching something hot
• Fight, fight or freeze response
• Kin selection in groups, like mothers having instinct to protect more the babies than themselves, to ensure survival of offspring and so of the species
  • (see more on “The Selfish Gene” by Dawkins)
• Same is in groups, like colobopsis explodens ants, where one of them can explode killing itself to protect the rest of the group from predators
• Other behaviors include protecting a territory after marking it, like dogs releasing scents
  • Same is for humans building walls on borders and taking time and effort to defend the territory
    • It helps also to not just survive, but to protect lifestyle, their idea of freedom and culture, etc.
    • (unless you are dealing with idiots that doesn’t understand why you should defend country borders, related to mental model 1.3, “Thermodynamic”)
• We may tend to make sacrifices to ensure legacy
• We are highly sensitive to scarcity and pain
• If my idea/child will survive/grow, in a sense even with my sacrifice, I will “preserve myself”, my species

3.6 Replication

• Ability of DNA to make a copy of itself during cell division
• It happens at nonsexual cell level, replication called mitosis
• Making errors in replication leads to possibly harmful results, so increasing fidelity in copying is essential for a species to survive
• For replication we need:
  • 1. A code to replicate
  • 2. A means of copying the code
  • 3. A place to process code and construct replication
• For sex, another process, called meiosis
  • Nature largely uses sexual reproduction, since it enhances mix of genes for variation
  • Lack of variation, keeping it all in the family, leads to disasters
    • Like in Habsburgs family
      • (you can see studies on Science mag)
    • The more you copy something, the more it weakens
      • (basically it’s like fax copies of the same doc, different when we adopt digital error control systems or re-gener. in ICT, much more likely in analog)
• Rigidity in tx leads to difficulties when something goes wrong, so some more sharing of info is needed, like guidelines or final intent
  • That’s exactly what was done by German defense, developing the idea of Aufragstaktik, Commander’s intent, the sharing of the final result intended, according to a need to know principle
    • This way, if a soldier can apply the intended specific order technique, can try a workaround to achieve the intended result
    • Explain rationale, tell operational limits (RoE), get feedbacks often, recognize individual differences
• Replicating cultures
  • Like tea, in China, Japan, Russia, UK, Kenya, etc.
    • (here there’s a lot to say in these cases, like differences and melting with existent culture, you can see anthropology studies)

3.7 Cooperation

• Cooperation, or symbiosis, is the idea that an organism can’t perform a fx alone, or anyway there’s benefit in interaction
  • (greatly explained in allegory of the long spoons)
• At micro or macro level, in nature there a lot of cases in which organisms or parts cooperate
  • Like Hawaiian squid and Vibrio fischeri, cows and bacteria in their digestive systems, lichens, algae and fungi, …
• In human ensembles, lot of examples, like Orchestras
• Cooperation in our society is possible thanks to the advanced brain capable of abstraction and eventually art
  • (going back in time, evolution started at the times of hunting big animals, or to protect/attack also other human beings)
• As Harari wrote, humans cooperate better when working in environments with shared belief, shared goals and shared interpretations like giving value to money and/or other values
  • (there’s a lot here, see all the sociology in military and everything)
• Dunbar’s number (see more in books like “Loneliness” by Cacioppo)

3.8 Hierarchical organization

• They are present in many animals organizations
• Organizing means generally more order and less fighting
• There’s a contract implied: the dominant member of a group has a certain responsibility in relation to other members
• Some hierarchies have benefit sometimes not evident at first
• For Plato and Plotinus, universe is arranged in hierarchy
  • (but see also the eastern culture, with Yin/Yang and other structures)
• A place for everything and everyone in their place
• Subdivision in 3 estates in France before revolution, from king to 3rd estate, with only few at the top
  • (even more evident in Caste system India)
  • Trying to destabilize and destroy suddenly the hierarchy can lead to instability and unexpected consequences
  • A new order can be a different hierarchy, but still a hierarchy, sometimes worse than the one before
• Some hierarchies are temporary created in emergency, like the famous example of miners like Luis Urzua in 2010 Copiapò accident
• As Harari observe, hierarchy is also useful to quickly understand role/position in a group, helped also by ranks and insignia
  • Big example, in the past, was the upper class wearing clothes absolutely unpractical to perform any kind of job, signaling they don’t have to touch anything like workers
• Boss vs leader, etc.

3.9 Incentives

• Incentives shape behavior in animals, toward reward and escaping from punishment
  • Stick and carrot
• “Never, ever, think about something else when you should be thinking about the power of incentives”, Charlie Munger
• In several experiments, it’s clear that animals change their behavior when they learn how to get rewards, with discovery and reinforcement
  • (see again Dopamine Nation and others)
• Long-term influence of short-term incentives, Niall Fergusson writes in Civilization: “We love our grandchildren, but our great-great-grandchildren are harder to relate to”
  • Politicians don’t even think longer than their actual mandate or next election, same is for companies
• Align incentives and “burn the ships”
• Long story of incentives in a lot of services and products, specially in pharma in favor or against
  • With big case of the vaccine-autism article published in Lancet by Wakefield
• (also for public intervention)
• (see again “Nudge” and others, asking often “cui prodest”?)

3.10 Tendency to minimize energy output

• All living species consume energy also for sleeping and standby, so nature has developed methods/strategies to increase energy efficiency
  • Turtles can maintain their bodies still in freezing waters, sharks have skin to minimize water resistance, etc.
• Brains, including human ones, are lazy and rely on heuristics for shortcut and minimize energy/time
  • (much more in “Thinking fast and slow” by recently gone Daniel Kahneman, a psychologist Nobel laureate in economics)
• Same applies to human activities
• (in short: path of less resistance, or maximum output with minimum effort)
• Sometimes, we focus on short term reduction of energy, like planning “open space” offices, since we may think it improve exchange of thoughts and talking between workers, but at the same time the total energy dissipated is much more, since workers may struggle to find calm and focus
  • It was mitigated partially by Robert Propst’s ideas in 60s to use also removable walls/forniture to create a middle way like removable cubicles

So…

Like already said in The Great Mental Models – General Thinking Concepts, remember that these are just tools: once you learned to master the models, the difference is in how you choose and use them.

Thank you Shane Parrish and staff for having wrote such a beautiful series of books.