Tim Urban's mental models

Their wordsA scientist gathers together only what he or she knows to be true—the first principles—and uses those as the puzzle pieces with which to construct a conclusion.

Their wordsThe chef reasons from first principles, and for the chef, the first principles are raw edible ingredients. Those are her puzzle pieces, her building blocks, and she works her way upwards from there, using her experience, her instincts, and her taste buds.

Their wordsThe chef creates while the cook, in some form or another, copies.

Their wordsBut what all of these cooks have in common is their starting point is something that already exists. Even the innovative cook is still making an iteration of a burger, a pizza, and a cake.

Their wordsConventional wisdom is slow to move, and there’s significant lag time between when something becomes reality and when conventional wisdom is revised to reflect that reality. And by the time it does, reality has moved on to something else. But chefs don’t pay attention to that, reasoning instead using their eyes and ears and experience. By ignoring conventional wisdom in favor of simply looking at the present for what it really is and staying up-to-date with the facts of the world as they change in real-time—in spite of what conventional wisdom has to say—the chef can act on information the rest of us haven’t been given permission to act on yet.

Their wordsConventional wisdom worships the status quo and always assumes that everything is the way it is for a good reason—and history is one long record of status quo dogma being proven wrong again and again, every time some chef comes around and changes things.

Their wordsAnd if the tenets of that church don’t truly resonate with you or reflect the current reality of the world—if it turns out that you’ve been working off of the wrong recipe—then whatever conclusions have been built on top of it will be just as wrong. As demonstrated by the flood geologists, a reasoning chain is only as strong as its weakest link.

Their wordsDogma, unlike first principles reasoning, isn’t customized to the believer or her environment and isn’t meant to be critiqued and adjusted as things change.