Agreed. This is basically folk cognitive science, slapping together random post-hoc explanations from popularized cog-sci terms and other domains from a few generations ago. I believe the target market is people who want to feel smart as they acquire the propositional knowledge of these so-called mental models.
Moden research demonstates wisdom, which is very roughly a measure of being a good, relevant general problem solver, doesn’t seem to work that way. There is no correlation of number of mental models in ones “head” (their words, embodied cognition weeps) with being a good general problem solver. At the very least, the problem of knowing which mental model to apply to what problem is still required and there is no meta-algorithm that can be developed for that.
Additionally, as you point out, tacit knowledge comes with participating in an activity, carrying out a procedure, acquiring a specific percpetive, all of which constitute different types of knowledge, which memorizing a random menu of “mental models” can’t ever substitute for.
But I applaud their ability to squeeze 2 volumes of 10$ books out of this material. Apparently their money making heuristic is working just fine, and I bet they haven’t used any of their own models for that because it actually seems to work.
Yup. Really almost everything sold online is a "shortcut" to some arbitrary destination. Beauty products, workout supplements, podcasts that give you a small view but seem like they are the way to figure out life, etc.
People want to expend as little energy as possible, which is understandable. But that lets them get tricked into all of this stuff.
Good to realize that "you can't get something for nothing".
Comments
Agreed. This is basically folk cognitive science, slapping together random post-hoc explanations from popularized cog-sci terms and other domains from a few generations ago. I believe the target market is people who want to feel smart as they acquire the propositional knowledge of these so-called mental models.
Moden research demonstates wisdom, which is very roughly a measure of being a good, relevant general problem solver, doesn’t seem to work that way. There is no correlation of number of mental models in ones “head” (their words, embodied cognition weeps) with being a good general problem solver. At the very least, the problem of knowing which mental model to apply to what problem is still required and there is no meta-algorithm that can be developed for that.
Additionally, as you point out, tacit knowledge comes with participating in an activity, carrying out a procedure, acquiring a specific percpetive, all of which constitute different types of knowledge, which memorizing a random menu of “mental models” can’t ever substitute for.
But I applaud their ability to squeeze 2 volumes of 10$ books out of this material. Apparently their money making heuristic is working just fine, and I bet they haven’t used any of their own models for that because it actually seems to work.
Yup. Really almost everything sold online is a "shortcut" to some arbitrary destination. Beauty products, workout supplements, podcasts that give you a small view but seem like they are the way to figure out life, etc.
People want to expend as little energy as possible, which is understandable. But that lets them get tricked into all of this stuff.
Good to realize that "you can't get something for nothing".