Categories
Newsletter

23 July 2023

Categories
Newsletter

03 November 2020

Mental Model Cobra Effect  | At the time of British rule of colonial India, the British government was concerned about the number of venomous cobra snakes in Delhi and so it offered a bounty for every dead cobra. The policy initially appeared successful. Eventually, however, the number of dead cobras being presented for bounty payment began […]

Categories
Newsletter

27 October 2020

Mental Model Representativeness Heuristic  | Consider the following: Linda is 31, bright, single, and outspoken. She majored in philosophy at the university. As a student, she was deeply concerned with issues of discrimination and social injustice, and also participated in antinuclear demonstrations. Is it more likely that Laura works at a bank? Or, is it more […]

Categories
Newsletter

20 October 2020

Mental Model Braess’s Paradox  | An observation by German mathematician Dietrich Braess who noticed that adding a road to a particular congested road traffic network would make traffic worse due to an increase in shortcuts becoming popular and overcrowded. Trend Micro Weddings | Google searches for “micro wedding” (defined as

Categories
Newsletter

13 October 2020

Mental Model Authority Bias  | The behavioral tendency to attribute greater weight and accuracy to the opinion of someone with an authority. This sometimes happens even when an individual believes that there’s something wrong with following the authority, and even when there wouldn’t be a penalty for defying them. In 1961, the now-famous Milgram experiment was […]

Categories
Newsletter

6 October 2020

Mental Model Ratchet Effect  | During times of crisis, government spending increases but has a tendency to not fall back to pre-crisis levels when the crisis is over. Trend Diamond Painting  | Diamond painting is one of the art world’s “up and coming, addictive” crafts. So declares the r/diamondpainting subreddit, which has blown up in […]