When you learn to see the world as it is, and not as you want it to be, everything changes. The solution to any problem becomes more apparents when you can view it through more than one lens.

p12 - As the Roman poet Publius Terentius wrote: “Nothing has yet been said that’s not been said before.”

p12 - most of your actions are based on incomplete knowledge - Richard Feynman

p16 - get out of your own way so you can see how the world works

p16 - I don’t want to be a great problem solver. I want to avoid problems.

p20 - simple problems aren’t multi-dimensional. the problem is that most problems aren’t simple

p21 - the only way to test understanding is action, learning and iteration

p22 - we have a hard time seeing the systems that we are a part of i.e., “this is water”

p22 - ego gets in the way. we distance ourselves from the results of our decisions. but without reflection we cannot learn

p24 - we undervalue the elementary ideas and overvalue complicated ones

p30 - we overuse the mental models we do have and apply them where / when they don’t make sense / don’t work

p34 - the world does not isolate itself into discrete disciplines. We only break it down that way because it makes it easier to study. labels / disciplines are a human construct; not natural

p42 - all maps / models are necessary reductions; they are not reality and therefore are “wrong” (p48). the description of the thing is not the thing itself. The abstraction is not the abstracted.

p43 - the only way we can navigate the complexity of reality is via imperfect abstractions though. so things get lost in the abstraction. we often consume these abstractions as gospel; which they arent. it’s tricky to see when the maps doesn’t align with reality. maps aren’t meant to be static.

p46 - when we follow the map without looking around, we’ll trip. you must understand the limitations of the map. it’s an abstraction.

p51 - models should comes with the context in which they were created. models “pull” reality toward them

p54 - AI is an abstraction; not reality. it lags by definition. without historical data to pull from, there is no AI. work on novel, unsolved problems.

p54 - statistical models are just that, models. not reality. what is accuracy? what is real?

p54 - don’t let maps prevent you from discovering something new. think beyond the map.

p55 - efficiency has an expiration

p56 - 1:1 maps don’t exist; if they did, it would no longer be a map / model.

p64 - within our circles of competence we know what we don’t know

p66 - learning comes when experience meets reflection

p68 - if you ask detailed an thoughtful questions, you’ll learn how to fish

p69 - incentives skew advice

p69 - you must learn enough of what you are being advised on in order to avoid succumbing to the motivations of the advisors.

p73 - ignorance more often begets confidence than knowledge. - Charles Darwin

p75 - there’s theories and what has been proven false, but rarely what’s wholey and absolutely capital ‘T’ True.

p75 - science requires testability

p80 - knowledge is only built when you actively try to falsify it

p81 - if you dont tear something apart to learn it from first principals yourself, you are bounded by someone else’s — possibly incorrect — interpretation or mental model.

p82 - Five Whys

p110 - second order thinking; you can never merely do one thing.

p119 - instead of arguing, demonstrate

p120- Countless examples from everday life show the pessimists are wrong

p132 - learn how to “fail”

p150 - “force field analysis”: identify your problem. define your objective. identify forces that support you toward your objective. identify forces that impede change.

p151 - Think about not only what you could do to solve a problem, but what you could do to make it worse — and then avoid doing that

p154 - Hence to fight and conquer all your battles is not supreme excellence; supreme excellence consists in breaking the enemy’s resistence without fighting - Sun Tzu

p158 - “Occam’s Razor” - we come up with extremely complicated explanations. simple explanations. “when you hear hoofbeats, think horses, not zebras”

p172 - “Hanlon’s Razor” - don’t attribute malice to something that’s more easily explained by stupidity. Failing to prioritize stupidity over malice causes things like paranoia. Always assuming malice puts you at the center of everyone else’s world. This is an incredibly self-centered approach to life. In reality, for every act of malice, there is almost certainly far more ignorance, stupidity, and laziness.

p178 - On October 27, 1962, Vasili Arkhipov saved the world but not assuming malice. He stayed calm and decided to get more information instead of immediately reacting based on assumed malice.