Updates

  1. Person pages list letters, writing, profiles and links as sortable tables with filters, and show each person's companies as links; Fund letters show each letter's description in its own column.
  2. Experts show a checked job title and a short description of each person; 30 more people have photographs.
  3. Every company, fund, university and publication the experts work for has a page listing the people there.
  4. Fund letters show each letter's thesis and filter by it; 225 person pages list the essays, columns and newsletter issues the person wrote.
  5. Person pages list every essay and newsletter issue a person wrote, and their own books as a table in List view.
  6. Recommends shows the five largest kinds of book and the rest under More; browse pictures load sooner.
  7. Podcasts and talks link the original episode, filter by Audio and video or Press, and list each publisher once.
  8. Pages are wider, Recommends has List and Grid, and a filter clicked again turns off.
  9. Book cards sit in a ruled grid with Open Library and Goodreads links and each book's one-line note.
  10. Funds is now Investors; each investor's styles are buttons that filter the table.
  11. Podcasts and talks on a person's page filter by year and publisher and show as a list or a grid of pictures.
  12. Quotes show only people's own words: 472 summaries written by list sites are gone.
  13. Country pages open from Browse again, and every link on the shelf lands on a page.
  14. Subject and person pages show their sections as tabs, and each book appears once on a person's page.
  15. Book cards show the quote, who said it and the source; grids show five cards to a row.
  16. On a phone, a menu holds the sections, search, Updates, Feedback and dark mode.
  17. Feedback takes a screenshot of the page with no browser prompt, opens a screenshot full size when you click it, and clears itself once sent.
  18. Book cards are centred, search names the topic each book sits in, and any text cut short shows whole on hover.
  19. Search groups its results by kind: people, companies, geographies, subjects, topics, books, funds, fund letters and papers.
  20. The Books table lists who recommended each book by name, and the browser tab names the section you are in.
  21. Feedback can take a screenshot of the page, or one you paste or choose, and opens in the corner beside Updates.
  22. Each rail button reopens its section where you left it, and Browse, Table and People show on every book and subject page.
  23. Filters grey out choices that hold nothing instead of hiding them, and Books › People filters by authors or recommenders.
  24. Feedback takes a subject line and up to three screenshots.
  25. Biographies are grouped by the person they are about: 41 new pages, from Abraham Lincoln to Lee Kuan Yew.
  26. Sport splits into 23 sports, and Religion into one topic per faith.
  27. Book lists show as cards: the cover, one recommendation quote and every recommender by name.
  28. Seventeen subjects that had two or three pages under different names now have one page each.
  29. Every page lists its Experts as authors and recommenders, with a link to them on the Experts tab.
  30. Economics, Financial history, Financial panics and Accounting are subjects of their own, with one page per financial crisis.
  31. Book, person and subject pages open inside the app, so the tabs stay in view.
  32. 996 more book covers, and photographs or logos for 227 more people and companies.
  33. Books › Browse shows every subject as cards, and the rail holds Fund letters, Papers, Experts, Books and Funds.
  34. Every topic over 150 books splits into narrower topics, each with a page of its own.

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The Map Is Not the Territory

Mental models

Every model discards detail in order to be usable, and the discarded detail is where it will eventually fail you. Accounting statements, factor models and industry categories are all maps drawn by someone with a purpose. Knowing what a model leaves out is the difference between using it and being used by it.

Books 11Experts 3Recommenders 34Resources 4

Start here

  1. The Great Mental Models Volume 1Shane Parrish, 2019
  2. The Model ThinkerScott E. Page, 2018
  3. The Black SwanNassim Nicholas Taleb, 2007
The Black SwanThe Black Swan
T1 The Black Swan
Nassim Nicholas Taleb · 2007
Open LibraryGoodreads

Rare, unforeseen, high-impact events drive history, explained only after the fact.

“The message of The Black Swan is how important it is to realize that the things everyone rules out can still come to pass.” — Howard Marks

Source: Oaktree memo 'The Limits to Negativism'

Recommended by: Howard Marks, Marc Andreessen, Nat Eliason and 18 others

Thinking in SystemsThinking in Systems
T1 Thinking in Systems
Donella H. Meadows · 2008
Open LibraryGoodreads

Meadows wrote this before systems thinking became a popular phrase, and it remains the clearest account of why short-term interventions in complex systems so often backfire. The chapter on leverage points is the conceptual core of what long-term thinking actually requires from decision-makers.

Recommended by: Patrick O'Shaughnessy, Daniel Burka and 3 others

Tractatus Logico-PhilosophicusTractatus Logico-Philosophicus
T2 Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus
Ludwig Wittgenstein · 1921
Open LibraryGoodreads

Language, logic and the limits of what can be said about the world.

Recommended by: Reid Hoffman

Science and SanityScience and Sanity
T2 Science and Sanity
Alfred Korzybski · 1933
Open LibraryGoodreads
Models.Behaving.Badly.Models.Behaving.Badly.
T2 Models.Behaving.Badly.
Emanuel Derman · 2011
Open LibraryGoodreads

A quant on confusing models with reality, in finance and life

Recommended by: Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Intuition Pumps and Other Tools for ThinkingIntuition Pumps and Other Tools for Thinking
T2 Intuition Pumps and Other Tools for Thinking
Daniel C. Dennett · 2013
Open LibraryGoodreads

Thought experiments and other tools a philosopher uses to reason carefully.

Recommended by: Patrick Collison, Shane Parrish

The Model ThinkerThe Model Thinker
T2 The Model Thinker
Scott E. Page · 2018
Open LibraryGoodreads

Recommended by: Keith Rabois, Michael Mauboussin

The Great Mental Models Volume 1The Great Mental Models Volume 1
T2 The Great Mental Models Volume 1
Shane Parrish · 2019
Open LibraryGoodreads

Recommended by: Ana Fabrega, Chamath Palihapitiya, Jenny Chu and 2 others

Kant and the PlatypusKant and the Platypus
T3 Kant and the Platypus
Umberto Eco · 1997
Open LibraryGoodreads

Eco on how we categorise the world and where categories fail

Recommended by: Nassim Nicholas Taleb

InvariancesInvariances
T3 Invariances
Robert Nozick · 2001
Open LibraryGoodreads

Nozick on objectivity and what stays invariant across perspectives

Recommended by: Nassim Nicholas Taleb

This Will Make You SmarterThis Will Make You Smarter
T3 This Will Make You Smarter
John Brockman · 2012
Open LibraryGoodreads

Short essays on the scientific concepts most worth adopting

Recommended by: Morgan Housel, Patrick Collison

More mental models

← The Lindy EffectThe Normal Distribution and Its Limits →All mental models