This is really good. It states a lot of things that it has taken me time and experience to learn, which I would have benefited from knowing early in my career. Authority is not always right, people in power have ulterior motives other than doing the right thing, when investigating a problem remove all assumptions and determine the root cause (this is both the hardest to do and also the best advice I've come across for any IT technical worker IMO). So many times I've seen people claim to have solved a problem by throwing a solution at it that appears to have worked, without determining the root cause, only for the problem re-manifest itself weeks or months later in a different manner.
During COVID I have thrown myself head first into reading and learning about cognitive biases, heuristics and all different types of human behavioral economics topics.<p>Thanks for creating this - if you need an additional writer, shoot me a PM. I have been posting similar stuff on my personal blog recently.
Great idea, looks really good. On the rational thinking topic: is there a name for the fallacy where you say something along the lines of "someone in group X would probably say Y and that's wrong because..."? X could be something like vegans, democrats or climate change deniers.<p>It's probably just a special case of a straw man argument but I see this often online and in the news to lure in replies and create outrage. It's hard to diffuse as nobody in the discussion will actually hold the set of views being presented. I usually want to reply "wait, who is actually making this statement that you're attacking?".
This looks intriguing. Welcome to the newsletter space! I run Thinking About Things [0], a newsletter with a similar premise - that of critical thinking and seeing things in a new light.<p>The demand for content about critical thinking is rising exponentially. I'm happy to collaborate and show you the ropes - you can find our contact info on the site.<p>[0] thinking-about-things.com
Perhaps its worth defining what you mean by "mental model"?<p>"Mental model" is one of those amorphous words that seems to mean very different things to different people.<p>Based on your content, it seems to mostly deal with critical thinking rather than what I consider as mental models. Though once again, it's an amorphous word thats unique to the person.
Congratulations on the launch of the newsletter OP.<p>Another news letter on rational thinking I would recommend is ClearThinking[1]. They also have several tools, tests for rationality/biases, specifically useful if we want to test ourself or someone else for a job for which these would be a problem.<p>[1]<a href="https://www.clearerthinking.org/" rel="nofollow">https://www.clearerthinking.org/</a>
Any suggestions for how to actually apply (or remember to apply) this stuff? I've read tons of lists of mental models (and have even written my own), but I just never remember to use them for any decisions, and when I do remember I can't really find one appropriate to the situation at hand.