Human psychology tortures reality to fit your mental models. With only one or two models, you force every problem into them. You need models from multiple disciplines because wisdom doesn't concentrate in one field.
Key models:
Amara's Law: You overestimate technology's short-term effect and underestimate its long-term impact.
Two-track analysis: Examine rational factors governing interests plus subconscious influences operating automatically.
Inversion: Turn problems into reverse. Find where you would die and avoid it. Self-criticize by disproving your best-loved ideas. Avoid sloth, unreliability, intense ideology, self-pity, resentment, revenge, envy.
Critical mass: The traction point where products become self-sustaining through network effects and scale economies.
Break-point: Critical junctures where key decisions shape outcomes.
Cancer surgery formula: Find anything sound in a mess that can survive independently. Cut everything else away. Repeat.
Simplification: Solve big no-brainer problems first.
Historical analogies: AI applications mirror browsers in the internet era and iPhone in the mobile era.
Y2K theory: Predicted disasters don't materialize when we coordinate prevention efforts.
Psychological misjudgments:
Incentives determine action more than reason. Cognition depends on situation—different contexts produce different conclusions from the same person. Distrust professional advice benefiting the adviser. Learn your adviser's trade basics. Double-check their recommendations.
Liking tendency makes you ignore faults, favor associated things, and distort facts supporting affection.
Inconsistency-avoidance makes habit prevention easier than habit change. New ideas get rejected for inconsistency with old ideas, not difficulty. Darwin trained himself to examine evidence disconfirming his best hypotheses.
Envy drives behavior more than greed.
Reciprocation governs daily exchanges. Wise employers ban vendor favors to counter this tendency in purchasing employees.