Mental Model - Abhishek Chakraborty

Black Swan Bias: Rare Events Don’t Happen Everyday

There’s wisdom in the saying, “Lightning never strikes (the same place) twice.” Black Swan events maybe rare but the distortions caused by them don’t disappear for a long time.

Success Comes With a Price Tag

Like everything, even success comes with a price tag. The key is figuring out what that price is and being willing to pay it. The problem however is that the price of a lot of things is not obvious (or remain hidden) till the very end.

Phase Transition: What Traffic Jams Teach Us About Office Politics

You’re driving home from work on a highway. The traffic is flowing well. Suddenly, out of nowhere, the highway turns into a parking lot of stopped cars. There’s no visible cause. There are no accidents in sight. Where did this traffic jam come from? And what does it have to do with office politics?

Counterfactual Reasoning: How to Ask Better What-if Questions

Suppose Jonny takes a drug and dies a month later, how do we go about investigating whether the drug might have caused his death? To answer this question (correctly) we need to imagine a scenario in which Jonny was about to take the drug but changed his mind.

True Lies: How Statistics Fools Us

When an ad says 80% of dentists recommend Colgate, what do you assume? Do you believe they asked ~1,000 dentists out of which 800 recommended Colgate, or do you think they asked 10 out of which 8 recommended Colgate?

What Disasters Can Teach Us About Good System Design

The Chernobyl disaster didn’t happen simply because of Soviet Communist top-down regime. The Challenger disaster didn’t happen simply because of the O-ring seals failure. These so called “root causes” are part of many reasons, and they are definitely not the main reason.

Working Hypothesis: How to Avoid Fooling Yourself

Facts don’t change our minds. The mind is stubborn, and no matter how strong the facts are, we undervalue evidence that contradicts our beliefs and overvalue evidence that confirms them. Ironically, the same brain that empowers rational thinking also skews our judgments.

Circuit Breakers: How to Walk Away from the Best Deals

The best deals are the ones you can walk away from. This is taken to the extreme when you face a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity that is slipping off your hands. How do you decide whether to press harder, or to give up? Mountaineer Ed Viesturs may have something to teach us.