mental models

Table of Contents

1. mental models

1.4. My mental models

1.4.1. Frontend vs backend

Backend makes it work, while frontend makes it pretty
Like Plumbing/Porcelain model in git, and Scripting/VFX in media

  • The two types of quality // Zeno Rocha
    Related to Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
    • Atarimae hinshitsu is the idea that things should work the way that they are supposed to.
      It’s a purely functional requirement and is satisfied when the product completes the job that it was designed to create
    • Miryokuteki hinshitsu, on the other hand, is the idea that things should have an aesthetic quality.
      It’s basically the kind of quality that fascinates you
    • « Some software just works, but inspires you because it has attention to detail »
    • Quality is not about trade-offs; quality is about philosophy. You can choose to achieve both atarimae hinshitsu and miryokuteki hinshitsu so that a product will meet users’ needs and be delightful to use.
      • self-awareness: You have to look at what you are optimizing for as an individual and see if that matches with what your team is optimizing for. If there’s a mismatch, there’s a high chance that you’ll end up with a suboptimal product.
  • Front end and back end - QuirksBlog
1.4.1.1. Model View Controller is the 3 layer version of this

Like for example W, X, and Z: The Layers of a System

1.4.1.2. Layered architectures are based on psychology rather than technical considerations

Frontend vs backend

1.4.3. Fast variables vs slow variables

emergence

1.4.4. Fundamental theorem of software engineering

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_theorem_of_software_engineering
“We can solve any problem by introducing an extra level of indirection.”
“All problems in computer science can be solved by another level of indirection”

1.4.5. Pendulum Effect hides a false dichotomy

When there is a pendulum effect (trends and general opinion swing from one extreme to the another), usually there is a false dichotomy behind it
The underlying issue depends on context and there is no “one size fits all” answer
For example computation on the server vs computation on the client (Bob Martin), or maybe monolith vs microservices
This is usually due to the Chesterton’s Fence effect

  • Sandboxing cycle
    1. “I wish these parts could communicate more easily.”
    2. “Ohh, this new technology makes it easy to create arbitrary connections, integrating everything!”
    3. “Uh-oh, there are so many connections it’s creating bugs and security holes!”
    4. “Ohh, this new technology makes it easy to enclose arbitrary things in secure sandboxes!”
  • Client-Server cycle
  • High abstraction / Low performance - Low abstraction / High performance cycle
  • worse-is-better vs the-right-thing

1.4.6. When you don’t know when to apply X, you tend to under-X or over-X

Pendulum Effect hides a false dichotomy
Hype is a high-frequency mode

1.4.7. Hype is a high-frequency mode

1.4.8. When the trade-off model is wrong

https://www.encyclopedia.com/science/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/tradeoffs

Tradeoffs occur under constraints similar to zero-sum games

Engineers push for the implementation of the latest technological innovations, whereas economists account for the tradeoffs involved in replacing older technologies. The former is the path to increasing technological efficiency, whereas the latter implies that economic efficiency takes wider social costs into account.

  1. False dilemma, there is no such tradeoff
  2. Barbell strategy (antifragile)
  3. The game is not zero-sum
  4. The underlying resources are no longer scarce
  5. A new tool is introduced

1.4.9. Robustness principle - Postel’s Law

the robustness principle is a design guideline for software that states: “be conservative in what you do, be liberal in what you accept from others”. It is often reworded as: “be conservative in what you send, be liberal in what you accept”. The principle is also known as Postel’s law

1.6. 10 Mental Models for Learning Anything

1.6.1. Problem solving is search.

Herbert Simon and Allen Newell launched the study of problem solving with their landmark book, Human Problem Solving. In it, they argued that people solve problems by searching through a problem space.
A problem space is like a maze: you know where you are now, you’d know if you’ve reached the exit, but you don’t know how to get there. Along the way, you’re constrained in your movements by the maze’s walls.

1.11.

1.12. The Gervais principle

Sociopaths, in their own best interests, knowingly promote over-performing losers into middle-management (clueless), groom under-performing losers into sociopaths, and leave the average bare-minimum-effort losers to fend for themselves.

1.12.1. The Modern Data Stack Through ‘The Gervais Principle’

The Sociopaths are the capitalist striving, will-to-power types who drive organizations to function. This is most business owners, founders, and some executives, among others.
The Clueless are the Kool-Aid drinkers, chained to corporate mantras, chained to operating paradigms that have done them a small favor like an incremental bump in pay or title for pledged fealty. Most effectively shuffle paper, data, and information around, and they construct narratives and grandiose stories to give their lives and labor meaning.
The Losers are those who have given up capitalist striving in favor of checking boxes within their organizational hierarchies, as in the checked out and the “I am just here for a paycheck” crowd.
https://garden.glennstovall.com/notes/mcleod%20hierarchy/
Losers are in a losing position economically. They optimize for anything outside of work that matters to them.
Being a programmer is ipso facto being a loser, because its a labor position, and all laborers are losers. Its incompatible with being an executive or owner.

Clueless are called that because they are loyal to a company that will never be loyal to them. They optimize for corporate identity. They are overly invested in “corporate culture.”

Sociopaths optimize for success.

The MacLeod firm follows a natural cycle.

  1. A Sociopath with an idea recruits enough Losers to kick off the cycle and build Version 1.
  2. Inevitably, as Version 1 kicks off, a Clueless layer is brought in to manage the increase in production, created by an increasing amount of Losers.
  3. This Clueless layer functions as a cushion between the capital holders/decision makers and those closest to production.
  4. As the firm grows over time through cycles, the Clueless layer becomes so large that it makes the firm unsustainable.
  5. Eventually, the Clueless layer takes over and collapses the company as the Sociopaths and Losers both make their exits, as they live closer to reality and can most freely move between organizations.

  6. https://treptoplax.livejournal.com/19437.html

    Dastardly as all this sounds, it is actually pretty efficient, given the inevitability of the MacLeod hierarchy and life cycle.
    The sociopaths know that the only way to make an organization capable of survival is to buffer the intense chemistry between the producer-losers and the leader-sociopaths with enough clueless padding in the middle to mitigate the risks of business. Without it, the company would explode like a nuclear bomb, rather than generate power steadily like a reactor.
    On the other hand, the business wouldn’t survive very long without enough people actually thinking in cold, calculating ways. The average-performing , mostly-disengaged losers can create diminishing-margins profitability, but not sustainable performance or growth. You need a steady supply of sociopaths for that, and you cannot waste time moving them slowly up the ranks, especially since the standard promotion/development path is primarily designed to maneuver the clueless into position wherever they are needed. The sociopaths must be freed up as much as possible to actually run the business, with or without official titles.

1.12.2. The Gervais Principle, Or The Office According to “The Office”

Sociopaths
David Wallace and Jan Levinson
Clueless
Andy Bernard, Dwight Schrute, and Michael Scott
Losers
Stanley Hudson and Kevin Malone

1.12.3. The Gervais Principle by Venkatesh Rao: Summary & Notes - Nat Eliason

1.12.3.1. Books recommended   book

Eric Berne’s Games People Play and What Do You Say after You Say Hello, and Thomas Harris’ I’m OK–You’re OK. (Yes, they’re dated, and have been parodied to the point that they seem campy today. No, that does not mean they are useless. Yes, you need a brain to read them critically today. Add these three books to the two I already referenced, The Organization Man and Images of Organization.)

1.13. The Shirky principle

https://kk.org/thetechnium/the-shirky-prin/
Institutions will try to preserve the problem to which they are the solution.
(Because the institutions are autopoietic)

1.13.1. Examples

  • Many products, especially in the technology sector, have “planned obsolescence.” If a product lasts too long, demand for new products won’t be as robust.
  • Pharmaceutical companies make more money from you taking a pill everyday than a drug that cures you outright. Curing disease may not be a sustainable business model according to Goldman Sachs, and that economic reality may hamper advances in genomic therapies.
  • Defense contractors make more money when there is a war than when there is peace.
  • Some police officers have their compensation tied to tickets issued or arrests made. If crime drops they have incentive to issue tickets or make arrests for lesser and lesser charges or under more questionable facts. The goal ends up being the issuing of citations, not making society safer.
  • Similarly, those who run prisons do better financially if their prisons are full. As such, private prison corporations lobby for longer, stricter prison sentences.
  • Private security forces in Afghanistan may have colluded with the Taliban to cause attacks to NATO caravans to create demand for their services.

1.14. The purpose of a system is what it does

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_purpose_of_a_system_is_what_it_does
The purpose of a system is what it does, there is no point in claiming that the purpose of a system is to do what it constantly fails to do.

1.15. The Wirth’s Law

Software is getting slower more rapidly than hardware is becoming faster.

Applied to people:
https://books.google.com/books?id=VTfvBd-d3oEC&pg=PA4
Software systems grow faster in size and complexity than methods to handle complexity are invented

1.16. Hawthorne effect

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawthorne_effect
«In a sufficiently homogeneus environment, any change will produce an improvement because of the novelty itself»

1.18. Measurement fallacies

1.18.1. The Campbell’s Law

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Campbell's_law
The more any quantitative social indicator is used for social decision-making, the more subject it will be to corruption pressures and the more apt it will be to distort and corrupt the social processes it is intended to monitor.
https://intenseminimalism.com/2018/campbells-law-and-the-long-term-approach-to-performance-indicators/
Campbell’s law is related to the cobra effect, which is the sometimes unintended negative effect of public policy and other government interventions in economics, commerce, and healthcare

1.18.2. The Goodhart’s law

When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure

1.18.4. The Cobra Effect

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perverse_incentive
A perverse incentive is an incentive that has an unintended and undesirable result that is contrary to the intentions of its designers. The cobra effect is the most direct kind of perverse incentive, typically because the incentive unintentionally rewards people for making the issue worse

1.19. The Woozle effect

The Woozle effect, also known as evidence by citation, or a woozle, is when a weak or unsupported study or claim is widely cited, giving it an unearned patina of respectability and common wisdom. Frequent citation of such publications lacking evidence can mislead individuals, groups, and the public: the result can become urban myths and factoids

1.20. Tetrad of media effects

https://jarche.com/2022/12/gpt-3-through-a-glass-darkly/
Every medium, or a technology, always:

  • extends a human property (the car extends the foot);
  • obsolesces the previous medium by turning it into a sport or an form of art, a luxury (the automobile turns horses and carriages into sports);
  • retrieves a much older medium that was obsolesced before (the automobile brings back the shining armour of the chevalier);
  • flips or reverses its properties into the opposite effect when pushed to its limits (the automobile, when there are too many of them, create traffic jams, that is total paralysis)

1.21. The bullshit asymmetry principle (Brandolini’s law)

law of triviality

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandolini%27s_law
the effort of debunking misinformation, in comparison to the relative ease of creating it in the first place. It states that “The amount of energy needed to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude bigger than that needed to produce it.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Mtmi8smpfo
https://www.slideshare.net/ziobrando/bulshit-asymmetry-principle-lightning-talk

1.23. The Second-system effect

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second-system_effect
the tendency of small, elegant, and successful systems to be succeeded by over-engineered, bloated systems, due to inflated expectations and overconfidence

1.24. The Baker’s Law

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21685434/
colonization by self-compatible organisms is more likely to be successful than colonization by self-incompatible organisms

1.25. Law of attraction

If you spent time doing X, or spend time with people doing X, then you do more of X

Our brains are constantly processing information, which we receive through multiple pathways. Much of this processing we are unaware of, what we are aware of is unconsciously selective. Our brain also can’t really tell the difference between what we imagine to be real and what actually is. In addition it manipulates the information that does come in. Thus why witness testimonials are often so unreliable.
when you are visualising and attempting to manifest something as if it’s real and believing that it is real, your sub-conscious will think it’s real too. Your super computer brain will now begin to pick up specific information, bringing attention to it, out of everything that’s being processed, that fits into this reality your brain thinks is real. Your mind will do everything it can for this schema to be manifested.

  • https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-psychology-behind-the-law-of-attraction-and-manifestation
    • Confirmation Bias: You are more likely to do things that will yield results that confirm your bias. If you think of yourself and unlovable, you are more likely to behave like a jerk so that people won’t love you. If you think of yourself as wealthy, you are more likely to do things that generate more wealth.
    • Tribal Grouping: You will tend to attract and hang with people who believe the same as you. If you hate the president, your friends are likely to hate the president too. If you love playing soccer, your friends are likely to love the sport as well. The things you do and talk about with friends will create more opportunities in line with what you think and believe.

1.26. Deficit Model of Persuasion

http://blog.byronjsmith.com/things-im-glad-i-learned.html

People who disagree with you about the way the world works often have all the same facts as you do. We don’t convince people of our world view by giving them more facts.
I find this depressing. But on the flip side you can be much more effective at persuasion by doing two key things (to my limited understanding):

  • Share your emotional reasons for your beliefs (e.g. I’m super excited to be able to travel and hug my parents again after they and I are vaccinated for COVID-19. I’ve been scared about their safety, and vaccination feels like an opportunity for optimism.)
  • Demonstrate that their community shares that belief. This is usually done by making them part of your community. (I think it’s really great that our family/college/neighborhood has really come together to get everyone vaccinated.)

1.29. Ratchet

Esto lo hablaron en Stoa, es algo que no te permite ir hacia atrás, es un concepto general (trinquete en español, como lo del freno de mano)
A ratchet is a antifragile mechanism?
In society, the conservative, lawful people takes the role of the ratchet, since it cannot discern when chaos is good or evil, beyond their OODA Loop (DnD alignments)

1.30. Mental Models for Surviving High-growth Startups - OfferZen

  1. Adlerian triangle: Look towards the future and focus on what to do next.
    Like Manager, Technician, Entrepeneur roles
    «This is a tension triangle?»
    1. That bad person: We blame someone else for causing the situation
      «Any external cause, really. Focused on past»
    2. Poor me: We have self-pity and view ourselves as a victim
      «What you feel now. Focused on present»
    3. What should I do from now on?: We look towards the future and the actions we can take.
      «Focused on future»
  2. Root cause focus: Focus your effort on solving the root problem and let the rest go.
  3. Separation of tasks: Work on your own tasks and let others do the same.
  4. Fireline: You have to let some fires burn so that you can focus on what’s most important.
  5. Failure bands: Identify an acceptable band of mistakes that can be made and then let people, including yourself, make some of them.
  6. Future focus: Concentrate on the rate of improvement rather than the current state.
  7. Crude but good: Imagine that after implementing the system you went on holiday for 3 months.

1.32. The Lindy Effect

the future life expectancy of some non-perishable things, like a technology or an idea, is proportional to their current age

1.33. Inverse vandalism / Vandalismo inverso

Probablemente tenga que ver con cultura occidental y hacer cosas vs cultura oriental y no hacer cosas

1.34. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance   book

1.35. Lila: An Inquiry into Morals   book

1.36. Mental models are BS

Commoncog serves as a general criteria for what to capture

1.36.1. Ver “Why Super Thinking is Super Bullshit and Mental Models are Dangerous” en YouTube

https://youtu.be/meGiDfippYc
A partir del min 14-20 hay alguna cosa interesante

Author: Julian Lopez Carballal

Created: 2024-10-21 Mon 09:36