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The Decision Book: Fifty models for strategic thinking (2019)

165 points| walterbell | 3 years ago |medium.com

26 comments

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[+] walterbell|3 years ago|reply
If these are too fluffy, here's an older (1305) mental model, https://socks-studio.com/2021/11/03/constructing-knowledge-t...

> Catalan polymath, Ramon Llull was the first person to conceive a device able to externalise the human mind. In his seminal opus, the Ars Magna, Llull conceived a series of figures that could replicate the mental ability to connect information in order to acquire knowledge. Thanks to these studies, he is considered a precursor of artificial intelligence research.

> The Llullian figures, a series of instruments that organise and place concepts into relationships, exploit the ability of geometry to produce interconnections on two-dimensional, paper surfaces. They employ lines, concentric shapes, ladders and frames bearing a visual quality similar to that of architectural plans ... it revealed an intrinsic potential to work as a “logic machine”, an instrument producing knowledge in different fields through multiple combinations of ideas. Llull constructed the very first demonstration that showed that human way of thinking could be imitated by a device.

[+] mooneater|3 years ago|reply
In those images I see: - complete graphs (the triangle matrices) - incomplete graphs (the circular ones with only some segments conntected)

And those are excellent ways to visualize these types of objects.

He built knowledge graphs.

[+] rramadass|3 years ago|reply
I am not "getting" it.

Can you point me to some blog/article/paper/etc. which explains how to read and understand these diagrams?

[+] emehex|3 years ago|reply
I really didn't enjoy this book. Too fluffy for me.

Better alternatives: The Model Thinker, or Algorithms to Live By!

[+] fronterablog|3 years ago|reply
Algorithms to Live By is a good book.

But my favorite is Antifragile from Taleb.

[+] chrisweekly|3 years ago|reply
ATLB was a game-changer for me; highly recommended!
[+] arnejenssen|3 years ago|reply
Agree. I felt i could have written it better myself.
[+] AstixAndBelix|3 years ago|reply
50???

this man doesn't seem to be aware of decision fatigue

[+] rramadass|3 years ago|reply
The book is just a catalog of different techniques (some have called it "just fluff") and is a small easy read.
[+] ChildOfChaos|3 years ago|reply
I find models are great and all, but in the end to me it's just intellectual pornography, when it comes time to make choices, i don't have the mental capacity or brain bandwidth to start running through 50 different models that i once read about to try and figure out what is the best choice, that's just too exhausting.
[+] rramadass|3 years ago|reply
That's quite the wrong way of looking at it.

It is just a catalog from which you pick and choose as needed; helpful to structure your thought process before making a Decision. Hence an exposure to the models is beneficial.

I personally believe in RPDM (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recognition_primed_decision) but the book gave me some other aspects to think of.

[+] wiz21c|3 years ago|reply
FTA: The rightness of a decision will vary with time, what seems wrong today may in the future seem to have been the right decision

ah ah ah. That's the easy case. Things get into problems when what sounded right yesterday now feels completely wrong.

There are so many variables and people are not completely dumb so that usually, any decision will do. The trick is to be able to convince others that you are right (and that happens mostly in an irrational space); before and after the decision is/was taken...

[+] Swizec|3 years ago|reply
Like when I sold 2 BTC at the first peak in ~2013. Oops.

BUT that $1200 represented a 400% gain, paid my rent (which I was short for), and it took almost 5 years for bitcoin to come back to the same value. Would it have been better to wait until 2021? Yes. Was it a bad decision? Not at all.

[+] acrefoot|3 years ago|reply
I really like the ideas in Annie Duke's "Thinking in Bets". The book would suggest that the rightness of a decision shouldn't vary much with the outcome (or with time).

The book suggests that we judge the quality of the decision based on how comprehensively we evaluated possibilities before we made the decision. Our habit is to re-evaluate the quality of the decision based mostly on the outcome, even if that outcome was one of the possibilities we considered. The book suggests that a good decision can't be judged by the outcome alone, as every decision is a bet with a variety of possible outcomes. (Adjusting priors for future decisions is related to this, and one should strive to allow adjusting priors in a disciplined way while not beating oneself up or congratulating oneself too much based on outcomes which were not certain going into the decision.)

You can luck into winning the lottery, and luck into really bad outcomes while investing into index funds, but that does not make playing the lottery a good decision. In fact two decisions that lead to the same outcomes should be respected differently, depending on how much work went into them and the quality of the decision-making framework(s) applied.

[+] totetsu|3 years ago|reply
Oh I bought this book many years ago. Its a family members bookshelf somewhere.
[+] Swizec|3 years ago|reply
Got it as a present 4 to 5 years ago. It’s been in my to-read pile ever since.

Looks promising. But never quite enough to get started