Super Thinking

Why should you read this book?

What is worldly knowledge? Things related to everyday life are important. We can also call these information. But things go further than this.

Sometimes even after knowing, we are not able to use that information properly. Once an American investor; Charlie Munger said that thinking big doesn't have to show anything.

Our definition is also that worldly knowledge is the application of these mental models in daily life. Everyday problems have to be solved. Now you will ask where these models can be found?

This is the answer that Gabriel Weinberg and Lauren McCann are giving. These models related to other subjects like economics, physics, philosophy etc. teach you to improve your decisions in daily life. This is what takes you to the next level.

- What a 14th century philosopher can explain to you about dating;

-It is more important not to make mistakes than to be right;

-What an Israeli daycare can tell about interfaith harmony.

Super thinking is a great way to see the world from a better perspective and take appropriate decisions.

We have to take many types of decisions in daily life. Even if they are small decisions, if they are wrong, we have to regret them, be it choosing a wrong life partner or wasting our savings or taking an unhappy job.

There are many puzzles in life, but if you have strong determination then those puzzles get solved.

Now you will ask if there is any way? So we would say – super thinking isn't it? Thanks to this, you see the world in a new way, away from the fixed framework.

Move! Let us tell you openly. Every industry has its own mental model on the basis of which the problem is depicted in the mind. These techniques are used which are considered as models. By adopting these repeatedly, problems in life can be reduced.

Common people do not even know most of the mental models. Only experts use them. These supermodels can make our everyday life wonderful. Experts are using it less now but this model will prove to be very useful in the changing technological environment.

Fax machines were invented in 1840, but due to their complexity, they were not used for 100 years. It was not within the power of every person or organization to adopt such an expensive technology. Even if you somehow buy a fax machine, you will not be able to talk to your acquaintances.

However, when the price came down, many people bought fax machines and more communication became possible. If we talk about numbers, two devices together make one connection, five together make ten and twelve together make 66 connections. By 1970, faxing became very popular. The network became useful due to the presence of so many machines. Having your own device allows you to contact anyone.

Due to this, many businesses came into competition. Demand for ride sharing services like Uber and Lyft increased. When people believed, the number of drivers started increasing.

Well, this is not just a super model that you can easily use. For your convenience, we are going to tell you many easy shortcuts in the upcoming lessons.

To avoid mistakes, take help of the first principle.

It is our way of looking at things that makes our determination firm. Talking about the principles of 19th century German mathematician Carl Jacobi, his statement is 'Invert always brings change.' This means that when you look at the problem from another perspective, it will become easier to solve it.

Investors have only one objective to earn profit. But Jacoby says that this saves money. So let's take a decision. It is a matter of common sense that sometimes it is better to wait for something better and there is no possibility of a wrong decision.

Tennis players call such mistakes unforced errors, which are not the opponent's merit but their own fault. If you too go through this experience in life, you too will get this thought.

One has to be careful to remove these unforced errors. The basic idea is to work from the first principle and choose the right path. Founder of automotive and energy company Tesla; Elon Musk calls this the basic truth.

When Musk was looking for a battery pack for his self-driving vehicle, he was told he could not get a price below $600 per kilowatt hour. He couldn't believe it. The first question that came to his mind was what was required to make a battery pack? What is the price of this item in the market?

The answer was that they needed cobalt, nickel, aluminium, polymer and seal which cost only $80 per kilowatt-hour. Musk felt that he should buy the goods and make his own cell. What was the result of this? The world got cheap batteries.

You can adopt these things in your everyday decisions. Now let's talk about finding a job. Many people apply to thousands of places and then accept the first opportunity they get. The first principle is to keep your approach different.

Understand your worth before sending your resume. What is more important to you – your freedom, money or status? Then look at your weak points. What position are you willing to accept even if it is below your qualifications? Then finally compare all the values. After this you will not ask which job is available but will choose the job as per your need.

Ockham's Razor can change your love life.

We have just read that solid arguments are based only on basic truth. But how true are they? How will you know this? This is an old question. The second-century Roman astronomer Ptolemy argued that a good principle was to keep the landscape simple.

1200 years later, the English philosopher William Ockham also came to the same conclusion. When he was faced with similar situations, he said as simple as the truth. This principle is called Ockham's Razor principle. This means don't give unnecessary explanations. If the word hoofbeats comes up, think of horses; Don't talk about zebras.

This model has many useful applications. Now take the example of dating. With the advent of dating apps and websites, choosing the right life partner has become easy. Many people like the blue-eyed Brazilian with a combination of raspberry ice cream and hot yoga. It is no longer impossible to find such things on dating apps.

According to Ockham's Razor theory, these are misleading things. Talking about the first, raspberry, chocolate and brown eyes – no big deal. But if they don't have any charm, funny nature or anything else special then everything is useless. Quality is more important.

This is how the web of common things is broken. In 1983, psychologists named Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman conducted an experiment. 31 year old; The woman named Linda is virgin, clever and talkative. He studied philosophy and attended demonstrations at university. Now it can also be said that Linda is a bank teller and is active in women's movements.

Most people will like the second option. This is the conjunction fallacy, meaning what is not there is visible. The probability of two events occurring together is always less than the probability of either event occurring alone. Now everyone knows that being a bank teller does not mean being a feminist? Now talking about dating, instead of knowing the preference of ice cream flavour, it would be better to find a match which is good and according to your culture. Now you must have known why something should be simple.
​It is difficult to put yourself in someone else's place, but not knowing anything sometimes makes decisions easier.

It is difficult to motivate other people when they are strangers. Because often we draw wrong conclusions. If our colleague sends us a short, rude email, we either take it as a mistake or assume that he is in a hurry.

Psychologists consider it basically a feeling of accusation. When we justify our behavior we refer to external circumstances. But find faults in the behavior of others. If you break traffic rules then it is justified because you have to go to the hospital and if someone else does the same then it is careless.

Therefore you should reconsider your thinking. Now as far as Hanlon's Razor model is concerned it says that you should not file charges where there has been negligence. If your neighbor is playing music loudly, it is not necessary that he is doing so to irritate you! He may not realize that the walls are very thin.

If you forget these small things and think positive, then it is better not to know many things. This model has been explained by American philosopher John Rawls in his 1971 book – A Theory of Justice. This is how it works-

Being born is like a lottery. Some people are so lucky that they get many opportunities. Others are unlucky who don't get anything. But we should not stop believing that our convenience and the loss of others are inevitable. According to Rawls, we should accept this wisely.

But imagine that you have no idea about what lies ahead and you have to create a society that is good. According to Rawls, you don't even know whether you will be born a slave or a free person! Then you will decide that being a slave is very wrong. You will take decisions not keeping yourself in mind but keeping everyone's feelings in mind.

This model will be useful in taking decisions for yourself. Suppose you are a manager of a company who is considering ending a policy that allows employees to work outside the office. You can see many benefits in this. But if you don't know much about it, will you go against this policy? Are you concerned about an employee being a single parent or elderly? This will let you know about other people's struggles.

If you don't want to see yourself lagging behind in social change, you will have to become accommodative.

There is a special kind of moth in Britain on winter nights. Before the advent of industries, these peppered moths were light in color, which protected them from being similar in color to the trees. But between 1811 and 1895 the number of dark-colored peppered moths increased from 0.01 percent to 98 percent. What was the reason?

This is Darwin's "survival of the fittest." An excellent example of theory. Due to coal mine pollution, a layer of dust started accumulating on the trees. Light colored moths were easily seen and became prey. But due to the dark color it became easier for them to hide.

America's scientists; Leon Megginson says that people confuse "the fittest" with strength, intellectual ability or high heredity. But the most important thing is how much you can adapt yourself according to the situation! This is the message we get from the story of kites changing colour. If you want to be successful in the society then you should know how to adapt yourself according to the circumstances.

Another great way is to have an experimental mind set. This is completely in line with scientific theory - first imagining, then investigating, then analyzing the data, inventing new theories. Successful people and organizations adopt this mind-set. Keep an eye on new tools to increase your working capacity.

Take the example of your health – if you find out that a particular type of food is good for your body. Someone will ask you to become a vegetarian; Some will ask for a particular type of food and some will ask for fasting. You will find out yourself by experimenting. However, you will have to do different things. You will have to find out for yourself which diet suits you by eating different types of diets one by one.

The same thing applies to your intellectual power also. If you are not experimenting with new ideas, you will remain stuck in old ideas. Feelings and thoughts keep changing all the time. You might have read that dinosaurs were wiped out by asteroids and Tyrannosaurus had very smooth skin. Today many experts have denied these things. These things have become old now. Just like this, you also have to bring newness in your thoughts just like the kites changed their colour.

Knowledge resulting from a mixture of actual evidence and illusion

We live in a world where data is valued. It is important to understand the changes in weather and changes in our daily life. Now such apps have also come which tell how many hours you sleep every day.

Is this good? yes or no? American writer Mark Twain says that mirrors do not like lies. In this way this number can mislead you. Therefore, it would be better if you do not count everywhere.

Be it the nutrition of your food or any government policy. People will claim that the data is in their favor. Even if they aren't trying to leave you behind; But their figures can also be shown inflated.

The biggest reason for mistake is that we believe the right evidence. Relying on bad data matters. If you see someone dying after eating berries, you will stop eating berries instead of thinking that you have to eat them in limit. This is just how confusion arises.

Also listen to people's stories that their grandfather used to smoke a pack of cigarettes a day and lived for 90 years. These special cases do not tell us about general things. It is the same thing that you go to a restaurant to eat and you are telling your friends whether the food is good or bad. In every case, cigarette smoking does not cause lung cancer. But it is not that it is not harmful.

This is the wrong idea that mutual relationships happen for some reason only. If two events happen one after the other then the first is the result of the second. The same thing is seen that every year people get flu vaccine. At the same time, if someone catches cold, they consider it to be flu and consider it to be a failure of the vaccine.

The complicating fact is that even after taking the vaccine, people are falling ill in greater numbers than usual. To what extent is it fair to blame the vaccine for getting flu immunity by not recognizing the common cold?? This is the problem with data – it often helps us understand things about the world, but often it also confuses us.

Confused social and economic rules reduce mutual trust.

Life is full of uncertainties. In economics, these situations are called 'social games' where people are players and are playing against each other. If one wins the other loses. Life is not black and white like chess. Sometimes everyone can win.

A book by Robert Cialdini, an American psychologist, was published in 1984 in which the tip was discussed. Waiters who give gifts to their customers get more tips. Offering mint after dinner means an increase of 3 percent. Two mints will be offered at 14%, if there is one extra it will be 23%.

This is a great example of mutual cooperation. Keep repaying each other's favors. These are in cultures all over the world. The Romans called it quid pro quo, which means something for something. In today's time we can say scratching each other's back.

This mutual cooperation is a social law. It is not written anywhere but people follow it. But we do not always behave like this. Sometimes it is good to follow the rules of the market. Good for everyone in society and good for oneself in market norm. See the difference yourself, if you get five thousand rupees for the job of babysitting, it will seem less to you, but to help a friend, you keep his child with you for four hours for free.

Both are useful viewpoints. If there is confusion, things go wrong. Now look at the case of a kindergarten in Israel. Economist Dan Ariely's book - Predictable Irrationality, written in 2008, mentions that parents used to come late to pick up their children. The school imposed fine for coming late. This policy backfired when parents always started coming late.

The reason for this is that earlier the parents used to feel a little shy on coming late and they used to try to come early but now they were paying fine so they used to come late and they had no shame for it. Even when the kindergarten stopped charging fines, the parents' habits did not improve. In this experiment both types of norms were tested.

With this you can understand where which model is to be used properly. This kindergarten example can help you understand how to frame things correctly.

overall

Super Thinking is a tried-and-tested model that improves your decision-making abilities and prevents you from making mistakes. These supermodels have been created after hard work from different sources like economics, philosophy and physics. These models remove complexity. Whether you use Ockham's razor to choose a life partner or lean on a theory to understand emerging markets; It is certain that you will definitely get success.

Weigh your decision based on advantages and disadvantages

The way to solve any big question is to make a list in which you write arguments for and against any decision and also write down its advantages and disadvantages. You will get different values for different facts. Here you decide each factor like this - minus 10 to zero for negative and zero to 10 for positive! In this way you will be able to relate every value. You will be able to judge correctly yourself. Suppose you have got a new job but for it you will have to go to another city. What will you give more importance to – the place or the good celery? This model looks simple but is very powerful! With its help, you can do better analysis and take right decisions.
​

.

 

​

 

---

---

Share

Comments (3)

Leave A Comment

Your Name:
Comment: