Your mental models tell you what to think and how to act

All of your thoughts and actions are the results of your mental models

You can´t function without mental models. When you start growing as a child, you do not have many models. The amount of them starts to grow. And finally, you have hundreds or even thousands of mental models as an adult. Your thinking becomes more complex and you see the world differently compared to your childhood. Your models are always updated. Most of your mental models affect your unconscious mind. This is why most people cannot figure out that all of their physical actions are based on their mental models too. If you want to throw a ball, your brain needs to have a chain of mental models to move all the necessary parts of your body to achieve your goal of throwing the ball.

Your view of the world is based on your mental models

You have your view of the world. This view is your latticework of mental models of the world. It consists of your mental models that are the results of your learned facts, previous stimuli, experiences, and current situation. Your response to different stimuli produces different actions or thoughts. They are both context-dependent. It means that your responses vary depending on the current stimuli and previous choices and experiences. For example, if you have made a decision month ago, it could be different today in the same stimuli and in the same location because you have had different experiences between these two decisions. There is a possibility that your mental models today are different than a month ago. There might be only a slight change or a big one.

Your view of the world is never complete

Your view of the world is imperfect. You cannot have a complete picture of the world, because it is too complicated. You can have a close to perfect view of your surroundings if you are isolated, but the world out there is always incomplete. You have at least hundreds of different mental models in your head. You might not describe them as models but they are models in their imperfect sense. Some models are closer to the truth than others. Different people have different models that are closer to reality than other people. For example, my mental model about the latticework of mental models is closer to reality than yours and your mental model about how well I can write is probably closer to the truth than mine because I suffer more from overblown ego than you do.

Your life is a result of your mental models and randomness

You can have close to perfect mental models and the result of your life can be an absolute tragedy. Your outcomes always have an element of randomness. Your life can end by standing in the wrong place at the wrong time. For example, you can do everything right and meet a stranger accidentally that is a terrorist or another kind of nutcase and he will shoot you to death. Some randomness can always change your life completely. I am not saying that it is the most likely outcome, but it can happen. You can only raise your odds to get the outcomes you want. Nothing is ever certain. You have to always think about the odds that your mental models are the best possible ones in the context you are using them. And you have to remember that your odds are never a hundred percent. The best odds of being right you get from the best principles of the most important intellectual disciplines like physics, biology, mathematics, etc. These models are universal and withstood the test of time even though they have been proven right only in the last centuries. If you need to improve your models and you probably do, these models should be first in your list. Most of them you can find here.

This is all for a while. I wish you a great summer. I will back at some point in time.

-TT