Book Review: Superthinking by Gabriel Weinberg and Lauren McCainn
“…you can’t really know anything if you just remember isolated facts and try and bang ’em back. If the facts don’t hang together on a latticework of theory, you don’t have them in a usable form. You’ve got to have models in your head.”
Charlie Munger, Vice Chair of Berkshire Hathaway
Super Thinking is a fast-paced introduction to the world of Mental Models that fires over 300 of them at you by the end of the book!
If you’ve not encountered mental models before, they’re lightweight conceptual frameworks, like a glorified rule-of-thumb, which help you understand situations that occur in the real world. Super Thinking was my first book on these models, and I’ve been spotting patterns from them in everyday life ever since I finished it.
In this book, Gabriel and Lauren shine a light on models inspired by many different fields from physics, biology, engineering, mathematics, medicine, and even their kids. Any and every source of insight or wisdom is used to help interpret the world. The book doesn’t aim to give a technical explanation, but to arm you with the ability to think at a higher level.
“…this is the book we wish someone had given us when we were starting out in our careers. That’s because mental models unlock the ability to think at higher levels.”
By higher level thinking they mean the ability to see through the noise and cruft in the immediate details of a situation, and to see it from a conceptual level. This allows you to think about it from a more principled position and ask deeper questions to help solve problems, rather than getting bogged down with too much information to process.
Gabriel and Lauren frequently say they wish they learnt about these models earlier in their careers which for two smart and successful people is quite something. They are both MIT educated. Gabriel is an entrepreneur, the founder and CEO of DuckDuckGo. Lauren holds a PhD, conducts medical trials for GlaxoSmithKline and has published several papers in medical journals. Despite their education and success, they wish they had learnt about mental models earlier in life, pointing out that it’s not a concept taught in schools, colleges or universities on a regular basis.
The book contains a mixture of ‘patterns’ and ‘anti-patterns’; models that can be seen as promoting good outcomes and ones that lead to bad outcomes.
There are far too many models in the book to mention them all, but some of my favourites include:
Most Respectful Intrepretation
“In any situation you can explain a person’s behaviour in many ways. MRI asks you to interpret the other parties’ actions in the most respectful way possible. It’s giving people the benefit of the doubt.”
Tyranny of Small Decisions
“where a series of small, individually rational decisions ultimately leads to a system-wide negative consequence, or tyranny. It’s a death by a thousand cuts.
Pareto Principal
“…can help you find high-leverage activties. It states that in many situations, 80 percent of the results come from approximately 20 percent of the effort.”
Despite the huge number of models in the book, it’s easy to read. Each chapter introduces models connected with a theme. Each model has a short explanation, example and suggested application; some even have memes or cartoons. This is perfect for an introductory book as it keeps the material moving at a fast pace and makes learning about the models seem fun. Despite the lack of details for each concept, they have sunk in by osmosis and are popping up in my brain just as the authors hoped they would.
The book has a very Silicon Valley, techy, start-upy feel about it. Most of the models come from science and mathematical backgrounds. There’s also quite a Western feel to it; potentially they could be missing out on thinking from other cultures or from the humanities.
Nevertheless, I’ve really enjoyed reading Super Thinking and learning about mental models. I highly recommend the book to any one who wants a broad introduction to them. I’m starting to see some of the patterns mentioned in the book in every day life, and trying to apply the models to these situations.