Mental Models

Our brain is being constantly bombarded with information; situations, events, news, human to human or perhaps human to non-human interactions. Mental models are (subconscious/conscious) frameworks built into our brains to process these flows of information. In simple words, it is; way of thinking.

Let’s look at an example of an human infant. As an infant grows into a child capable of speaking and interacting with the surrounding, the brain learns how a specific information should be interpreted. Everyone laughing around you ? It’s probably something good happening. Everyone around you panicking and yelling ? There might be something bad happening.

As the child matures into an adult, its worldview is constantly getting shaped and moulded by the society it lives in, the media it consumes and people it interacts. As such, we might often develop a skewed, or perhaps even a flawed way of interpreting the world. Mental models gives us a different – but not necessarily correct, ways of interpretation. We can apply multiple mental models on a particular decision or situation, which gives us a diverse way of looking at them. The real answer usually lies somewhere between them.

I am documenting them here not just for my own reference, but hopefully for others as well who are fortunate enough to stumble upon them.

• My Mental Models
• Introduction: Me !