# Mental Models #topic ## Source - https://fs.blog/mental-models/ - https://fs.blog/great-talks/a-lesson-on-worldly-wisdom/ ## What Are Mental Models? Mental models are how we understand the world. Not only do they shape what we think and how we understand but they shape the connections and opportunities that we see. Mental models are how we simplify complexity, why we consider some things more relevant than others, and how we reason. A mental model is simply a representation of how something works. We cannot keep all of the details of the world in our brains, so we use models to simplify the complex into understandable and organizable chunks. ## Core mental models (by fs.blog) - [[mm - the map is not the territory]] - [[mm - circle of competence]] - [[mm - first principles thinking]] - [[mm - thought experiment]] - [[mm - second order thinking]] - [[mm - probabilistic thinking]] - [[mm - inversion]] - [[mm - Occam Razor]] - [[mm - Hanlon Razor]]