Mental Models: The Mind’s Search Algorithm

The big general objection to economics was the one early described by Alfred North Whitehead when he spoke of the fatal unconnectedness of academic disciplines, wherein each professor didn’t even know of the models of the other disciplines, much less try to synthesize those disciplines with his own … The nature of this failure is that it creates what I always call ‘man with a hammer’ syndrome. To a man with only a hammer, every problem looks pretty much like a nail. And that works marvellously to gum up all professions, and all departments of academia, and indeed most practical life. So, what do we do, Charlie? The only antidote for being an absolute klutz due to the presence of a man with a hammer syndrome is to have a full kit of tools. You don’t have just a hammer. You’ve got all the tools.

Extreme success is likely to be caused by some combination of the following factors: a) Extreme maximization or minimization of one or two variables. Example[:] Costco, or, [Berkshire Hathaway’s] furniture and appliance store. b) Adding success factors so that a bigger combination drives success, often in nonlinear fashion, as one is reminded of the concept of breakpoint or the concept of critical mass in physics. You get more mass, and you get a lollapalooza result. And of course I’ve been searching for lollapalooza results all my life, so I’m very interested in models that explain their occurrence. [Remember the Black Swan?] c) an extreme of good performance over many factors. Examples: Toyota or Les Schwab. d) Catching and riding some big wave.

A good search algorithm allows you to make your mental choices clear. It makes it easier for you to be mentally choiceful and to understand the reasons why you’re making these mental choices.

Now, what should go on the branches of your tree of mental models? Well, how about basic mental models from a whole bunch of different disciplines? Such as: physics (non-linearity, criticality), economics (what Munger calls the ‘super-power’ of incentives), the multiplicative effects of several interacting causes (biophysics), and collective phenomena – or ‘catching the wave’ (plasma physics). How’s that for a science that rocks, by placing at the disposal of the mind a large library of forms created by thinkers across hundreds of years and marshalling them for the purpose of detecting, building, and profiting from Black Swans?

The ‘tree trick’ has one more advantage – a big one: it lets you quickly visualize interactions among the various models and identify cumulative effects. Go northwest in your search, starting from the ’0’ node, and the interactions double with every step. Go southwest, on the other hand, and the interactions decrease in number at the same rate. Seen in this rather sketchy way, Black Swan hunting is no longer as daunting a sport as it might seem at first sight.