Swedish essayist who writes Escaping Flatland, a newsletter of essays on relationships, thinking, writing and homeschooling.
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4 of Henrik Karlsson's claims fit 4 mental models. Most often: Feedback loops, Cognitive biases, The map is not the territory.
Shorten the loop between doing and finding out; whatever a loop rewards is what you become.
Their wordsThe lesson is that the feedback loops that we let work on ourselves shape us to an unsettling degree.
Mental modelWhen a measure becomes a target
Their wordsIf there is a feedback loop reinforcing a behavior, it is hard not to go in the direction that improves the score.
Your mind jumps to conclusions and defends them; look for the evidence against you and use checklists.
Their wordsIt is common to think that what we do achieves what we want it to achieve, even if there is no evidence for it.
Every model, word or plan is a simplified map of reality; useful when its structure matches, misleading when mistaken for the thing itself.
Their wordsThe problem with his old images, and with photography, was that that is not at all what the world looks like to us.
Reward a number and people, or machines, will find ways to move the number without the thing it measured (Goodhart's law).
Mental modelFeedback loops
Their wordsIf there is a feedback loop reinforcing a behavior, it is hard not to go in the direction that improves the score.