Mind & Self
Mental Models & Famous Laws
A latticework for clearer thinking
Novice
Mastery0%
Novice
Mind & Self
A latticework for clearer thinking
Novice
Subdomain
Lightweight frameworks for choosing well under uncertainty: expected value, inversion, second-order effects. Pull them out before the choice, not after.
Margin of safety
A buffer built into a plan or estimate that absorbs error, surprise, or worst-case conditions.
Open
Circle of competence
The mental boundary around the domains in which you actually have the knowledge and judgment to make reliable decisions.
Open
Convex vs concave payoff
A framing of decisions by the shape of their payoff curve, where convex payoffs have asymmetric upside from small inputs and concave payoffs have asymmetric downside.
Open
OODA loop
A decision cycle developed by John Boyd for fast adaptive action, in which an agent continuously observes the environment, orients to its meaning, decides on a course, and acts, then loops.
Open
Premortem
A planning exercise in which a team imagines that a project has already failed and works backward to identify the most likely causes, then redesigns the plan to mitigate them.
Open
Mental model
A compact, transferable way of thinking, a lens for decisions.
Latticework
Munger: a small set of strong models from many fields, used together.
Inversion
Solving by avoiding failure modes instead of chasing success.
Opportunity cost
Next-best alternative forgone.
Sunk cost
Money/time already spent and unrecoverable.
Steelman
Strongest possible version of an opposing argument.
Antifragile
Improves under disorder, beyond just robust.
Second-order effect
Consequence of the consequence.