How some models intertwine and interact, in short part 2

This text is a second part of two-part text that shows how models interact and intertwine. It is a short education for the relationships of the models. This text helps you to edit your latticework of mental models when you read the text with deep thought. Be ready to disagree with me and discard any failed assumptions I might have. Enjoy the text

System structures like interconnections set out the paths of least resistance. For example, politicians do what they promise to people who finance them instead of what they promise to voters. Politicians cannot get elected without financiers, but voters matter less. Evolution is a complex adaptive system which corrects itself through the path of least resistance. The more competitive the field of expertise, the better systems you need to have an edge. Strategy is not only a system, its execution requires several of them.

Feedback loops work in increasing the odds of correct predictions. Successful predictions require continuous processes with balancing loops which produce additional information to improve last predictions. The evolution works through continuous feedback loops. During the lifetime of species, feedback loops must compound the best effects of genes first, and the worst effects last.

Understanding the daily cycle helps in motivating people. Motivation is strongest during the morning and fades toward the evening. Understanding cycles gives an edge in many fields of expertise. Most people have no clue about the existence of a long-term socioeconomic cycle, and they do not understand there are different seasons.

Better skills produce simplicity. Useless energy-consumption diminishes. Better skills help you produce faster reactions when they are necessary. Many skills have natural cycles. Understanding them accelerates learning. Which gives better odds to create an edge. Feedback loops in performing measurable skills work with adjusting your results of previous performance to next one.

Motivation or its absence are reactions to internal or external factors. It can compound after successful repetitions during the practice. Motivation has not only daily cycles, it fluctuates in shorter ones. When the edge becomes abundant, motivation to maintain it can disappear. Motivating is easier when you use psychological tendencies as leverages.

Deliberate practice requires simplicity of the process. It focuses on improving one thing at a time and discard others. Performer needs to a feedback loop between him and the skilled authority that helps him react to flaws in action sequences during practice. Deliberate practice requires a strategy for a long-term development of the performer.

Creating an edge requires a permutation of several factors including talent transferred through genes and most components of the deliberate practice. Edge does not create compounding effects unless people cannot notice the contrast between the skills of a performer with an edge and one without it.

Evolution is a chain reaction which has developed living beings throughout billions of years. It improves biological traits with a minuscule compounding rate. Cultural evolution requires a critical mass of people to develop their norms and actions with mutual understanding. Most psychological biases are the products of slowly developing brains and faster developing environments.

Figuring out opportunity costs of each added option after their optimal number compounds the unwanted effects of the decision process. The same process requires skill when it bases on facts you cannot easily measure.

Working psychological tendencies are reactions to stimuli. They can create edges with skilled exploitation. You learn most of them from authority figures who provide them on purpose or accidentally from random stimuli. Skilled execution of a strategy requires understanding psychological tendencies of each stakeholder.

Excessive self-regard is one of the most common reasons you lose an edge. You forget to be humble and become overconfident about your skills compared to other people. The greater the edge becomes, the higher the odds that your ego grows too much. It is also one of the most common weaknesses smart people have.

The availability of simplified actions others execute helps you to eliminate complexity. Availability of the skilled actions affects your chances to become more skilled during moments without practice. The availability of the reminders about weaknesses has to be minimal. You can improve the execution of a strategy by increasing its availability to all stakeholders.

Social groups work better when the roles in them are simple and clear. Social proof often compounds, but the rate variations are high. The rates increase when perceived authorities spread the message. Sometimes the scarcity of the message strengthens it. This happens when a tight group shares the common delusion and others are against it.

Persuasion professionals can increase need to reciprocate by increasing your path of least resistance by compounding the value of favors or gifts. The availability of other people reciprocating the favor you got, strengthens your need to do the same. When you choose from two similar authorities, your choice is one who did more favors or gave better gifts.

Authority positions imply edges, no matter whether they are real. They are often antifragile. When somebody attacks their credibility, their followers´ beliefs strengthen. Your mind can create a perception of you becoming an authority when excessive self-regard strengthens your beliefs after lots of effort to understand the topic. Authority figures in groups sometimes use invented antiauthorities to strengthen their ideology.

Scarcity of an edge offers leverage to increase its effectiveness. Scarcity is one of the strongest enemies of willpower. It destroys attention effectively. When you feel that the advice from the authority is scarce, it strengthens his status. Abundance of advice inverts the effect. The same effects apply to the scarcity and abundance of status symbols.

The contrast between the current path of least resistance and the preferable new one must often be big enough for recognition, but so small it requires minimal willpower. The contrast between authorities can make a difference in their believability. It increases the perception of importance of the stronger one and destroys the credibility of the weaker.

When your decision-making system confronts its limits and your brain loses willpower with too many decisions during the daily cycle, each added decision increases the odds of undesirable outcomes. The odds of good decisions grow when you use checklists as leverage in complex situations.

Successful strategy cannot produce too many irreversible reactions for stakeholders. Focus on your edges and weaknesses of opponents when you create a strategy for competitions. Strategies evolve when they confront obstacles in execution. Strategies need social proof and authority figures to maximize their effectiveness to stakeholders. Execution of a strategy improves when all stakeholders use the same checklists to apply shared tactics.

Checklists simplify the execution of complex actions. Their use requires willpower and rationality unless you program them to intuition. Checklist is seldom useful when a power-law event strikes. They are useful components of personal systems. Checklists have to be available to your senses and mind. Use contrast to make each item on the list more available.

How some models interact and intertwine, in short part 1

This text is a first part of two-part text that shows how models interact and intertwine. It is a short education for the relationships of the models. This text helps you to edit your latticework of mental models when you read the text with deep thought. Be ready to disagree with me and discard any failed assumptions I might have. Enjoy the text

Understanding requires seeing how models interact and intertwine. It is not enough to figure out each model by itself. I show you how few models interact and intertwine in this text. It focuses on a few direct relationships of each model. The number of combinations of models in the book is beyond the understanding of a human mind when you consider indirect effects of the models. I have limited the number of relationships of each model to a few because you learn more with figuring out them by yourself. This chapter focuses on relationships that you cannot find anywhere else in the book. This chapter helps you add some relationships between models and figure out more of them yourself. It is not for rote learning.

Data utilization, theory of constructed emotions, simplicity, and associations interact with all other models. Data utilization is a process to use the understanding of models to react to all stimuli and create the right response. Theory of constructed emotions shows you the process brain uses to create thoughts, sensations, actions, and decisions in form of concepts that are mental models. Simplicity forms guidelines to keep models as understandable as possible and increases odds to use them with the most efficient ways. Brain uses associations to establish links between all mental models. Therefore, all models are associations.

Long-term effects of reactions are often their inverted short-term effects. Inversion relates to probabilities and statistics because it makes them easier to use when certain conditions are in place. It helps you suffer less from excessive self-regard by changing the question ”what are the good points about my beliefs, facts, etc.?” to form ”what are the weaknesses of my beliefs, facts, etc.?” Inversion is a great way to produce a better strategy by starting from the end and moving to the beginning, etc.

Some parts of mental models are irreversible reactions to other models. For example, there are no power law events if the number of particles of a reaction do not reach a critical mass. Different elements of the system react to changes in one element. Chain reactions of interacting models happen. For example, there are no good high-stakes decisions without a great decision-making system in which simplifying leads to fewer options and better quality data that lead to smaller effect of psychological tendencies that can lead to better probability of the best decision.

Combinations of models often work to the same direction. You cannot have deliberate practice without motivation, an effective and fast feedback loop with skilled coach or instructor and willpower to endure with constant failures, etc. Permutations of models have similar characteristics than combinations, but they include path dependence. For example, you cannot have superb skills without the compounding effects of multiple correct repetitions.

Compounding effects do not happen without a feedback loop. Increasing inertia leads to stronger effects of compounding. Having a slight edge creates winner-take-all effects through compounding in the long term. Opportunity costs compound with increased complexity. Evolution also creates variety and extinctions through compounding effects of mutations in genes. Using leverage can increase the compounding effects.

Reaching critical mass requires inertia, compounding effects, feedback loops, and its acceleration fastens with leverage. Critical mass of repetitions is also a necessity to create the novel path of least resistance. You cannot have a latticework of models without enough of them. You cannot have an edge and use it to your advantage without the critical mass of skill.

Inertia that results from the critical mass of people, their psychological tendencies, simplified, sticky messages and the right environment, is a requirement to form enough social proof for social epidemics. Timing is crucial for components that provide inertia for social contagions. If the moment is wrong in the socio-economical long-term cycle, inertia does not have enough power.

The path of least resistance interacts tightly with some models like Inertia, critical mass, tendency to focus on the most available things, social proof, etc. When something has inertia, moving to the same direction and/or preserving the status quo are paths of least resistance. Social contagion grows naturally when it reaches critical mass and creates the path of least resistance. Your tendency to focus on what is the most available to you uses the path of least resistance. The same applies to your other psychological tendencies when the conditions are the most favorable. They often relate these conditions to the bottoms of your daily cycles.

Each decision compounds negatively after sleep against willpower toward the end of day. You need willpower to conscious creation of the path of least resistance. It fluctuates with the daily cycle, sharing its top, and slumps. High-stakes decision-making systems require willpower, and you need it to resist psychological tendencies when they are not beneficial.

Self-reinforcing feedback loops can create leverage, and self-balancing loops deleverage. You can increase the effects of leverage with higher availability. You can also get yourself to act by leveraging the power of your other psychological tendencies. You can create paths of least resistance to use levers, such as support systems. If you want to have an edge, use the leverage produced by compounded repetitions, help from other people, strong motivators, and deliberate practice. You will either have to hire a coach to create a feedback loop with instant inputs to your outputs or find how the greatest performers of all time have done things.

The probability of making the right conclusions, actions, and decisions increases with the proper use of all models in the book. The result you get depends also on randomness. Probabilities increase or decrease when the psychological tendencies affect decisions. You can use statistics to reveal your lack of skill compared to your existing beliefs. Statistics comprises useful tools to predict the evolution of genetic characteristics of the offspring.

Power law events follow the compounding rate changes of social contagions. They create results with extreme statistical distributions and unquantifiable expected payoffs. Self-reinforcing feedback loop can turn slight edges to extreme differences in results. The results apply to many things, including extinction of species.

Understanding antifragility separates skilled from lucky fools in many areas of expertise like investing. Antifragile is a characteristic of a system which gets stronger from the impacts of power law events like evolution by natural selection. Its understanding follows the extreme power law distribution in human population because most people believe that you get resiliency or robustness when you invert fragility. Strong beliefs that result from excessive self-regard are antifragile. They get stronger whenever you get evidence against them.