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Mental Models 102 - The Decision Strikes Back | George Mack

I'm joined by long time friend of the show and all round great human George MacGill to re enter the world of Mental Models. Mental Models are tools you can use to improve your ability to effectively make decisions. Today we are upgrading our minds by thinking about thinking, as we delve into some of mine & George's favourite mental models from Jocko Willink, Paul Graham, Ben Bergeron, Navil Ravikant, Nassim Taleb, David Wong and many more. Extra Stuff: Follow George on Twitter - https://twitter.com/george__mack Rick & Morty & Roy - https://youtu.be/szzVlQ653as David Wong's Article - https://www.cracked.com/blog/6-harsh-truths-that-will-make-you-better-person/ Check out everything I recommend from books to products and help support the podcast at no extra cost to you by shopping through this link - https://www.amazon.co.uk/shop/modernwisdom #MentalModels #Naval #JockoWillink - Listen to all episodes online. Search "Modern Wisdom" on any Podcast App or click here: iTunes: https://apple.co/2MNqIgw Spotify: https://spoti.fi/2LSimPn Stitcher: https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/modern-wisdom - I want to hear from you!! Get in touch in the comments below or head to... Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx Email: modernwisdompodcast@gmail.com

George MackguestChris Williamsonhost
Aug 19, 20191h 28mWatch on YouTube ↗

EVERY SPOKEN WORD

  1. 0:00 – 15:00

    70 to 80 years…

    1. GM

      70 to 80 years ago, we would've been in a world war. Li- could you imagine telling someone in the trenches, "Oh, I'm addicted to Insta- shut the..." You know what I mean? Part of me is like, we go back to extreme ownership and personal responsibility, log off.

    2. CW

      So-

    3. GM

      Sign out.

    4. CW

      I get it.

    5. GM

      Delete the app. You end up at a random uni, and then the people who happen to be placed near you in halls-

    6. CW

      (laughs)

    7. GM

      ... it's literally Susan on a Excel spreadsheet who randomly decides this.

    8. CW

      Yeah (laughs) .

    9. GM

      And it's mad to think the amount of Susans or Dereks that have decided people's best friends forever (snaps fingers) .

    10. CW

      Next one, availability bias.

    11. GM

      I was chatting to, uh, one of the (laughs) guys from work, and there's some digestive biscuits in the kitchen. And none of us like digestive biscuits, but we're eating digestive biscuits every single day, 'cause they just are there in the-

    12. CW

      Yeah.

    13. GM

      ... in the jar. And yet, whatever's available to you, you've got to almost instill willpower to avoid it.

    14. CW

      Mm-hmm.

    15. GM

      Which means that given enough time, given enough lack of sleep, given enough XYZ, you're probably gonna give in at some point.

    16. CW

      Mm-hmm.

    17. GM

      So yeah, design the environment is key.

    18. CW

      The internet goes wild for George McGill back on Modern Wisdom. It's been a long time, man. Thank you so much for coming back on.

    19. GM

      It's good to, it's good to be back. You brought me out my cave. It's good.

    20. CW

      I have indeed.

    21. GM

      Yeah.

    22. CW

      A lot has changed since we were last here.

    23. GM

      Yeah, a lot, a lot has changed from, f- for, uh, both parties, I imagine.

    24. CW

      Yeah.

    25. GM

      Always changing.

    26. CW

      You're down in London now. You were in Manchester last time we saw each other.

    27. GM

      Yeah, down in London, uh, bit more expensive, but-

    28. CW

      (laughs)

    29. GM

      ... you get what you pay for.

    30. CW

      Yeah, you do, a lot of opportunities.

  2. 15:00 – 30:00

    Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. …

    1. GM

      think of smartphone policies, right?

    2. CW

      Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

    3. GM

      But you try and take what your parents did right, and then what your parents could've or should have done as well, and then-

    4. CW

      The evolution of ideas, as well.

    5. GM

      Yeah. And the better childhood you have, the, the more, the less stuff that you have to change. You just, you just copy and paste over. Um, and, and then you obviously look at ideas that you hear from other parents or other parenting stuff. And I've not really gone deep down the parenting rabbit hole yet.

    6. CW

      No.

    7. GM

      Uh, again for, uh, hopefully for a while. But he talks about how when he, uh, his son was very, very young, um, the first few years of his life, the first thing that parents will do to change the locus of control of a child, and it's not a conscious thing, it's very, very subconscious, and it's the mo- it's one of the most consistent conversations you ever hear. Uh, certainly, I don't know about other countries, but particularly in the UK, uh, the conversation about the weather where it's, "Oh, weather's nice today, isn't it?" And he goes, "Yeah, it's great when it's like this," which rarely happens over here, it's like, "Weather's miserable today," and it's like, "Yeah, the weather's miserable, isn't it?" Um, and he noticed that parents would constantly have this conversation with their kids, whereas if the weather was bad outside, therefore, oh, we should feel a bit rubbish and we should just stay in and play board games. And he realized that that is one of the first moments that a kid gets conditioned to have this low locus of control. And what he did instead was flip it on its head, which is whenever it's pissing it down outside, "Oh, look at how beautiful it is." And you could argue it is beautiful, right? There's rain coming down, there's storms and there's thunder. So the perspective is it definitely is beautiful, and let's go out and play in the rain. And then you condition the mind that, oh, whilst everybody else gets really upset about this moment, this is actually a moment to truly experience and appreciate. And I try and like now, when it's raining, I catch my ... That, that is one of the metaphors that stuck in my head for the longest, 'cause even when it's raining now, I'm like, "Oh, fuck's sake."

    8. CW

      Yeah.

    9. GM

      I get my clothes out and I go, "First off, it's not that bad."

    10. CW

      It's water.

    11. GM

      Right? It's not that bad.

    12. CW

      Yeah.

    13. GM

      Um, and, yeah, and if you just say good, and I know I look like a so- psychopath, 'cause there's people in the rain who are like fucking covered like that, and I'm fucking buzzing, smiling, 'cause I've got that metaphor in my head.

    14. CW

      Yeah.

    15. GM

      Yeah. And it just goes back to the Jocko Willink good thing as well, like when everything's going ... So this is a weird one that I've tried to practice a little bit of late, is when everything's going bad, I say good. And when everything's going good-

    16. CW

      (laughs)

    17. GM

      ... I sort of say bad 'cause I know that s- psycho, psychologically I sometimes take my, I might take my foot off the gas-

    18. CW

      So are you, are you stood in the rain like the guy at the end of Shawshank Redemption, crawling out of the pipe of shit, looking up and being like, "Aah."

    19. GM

      (laughs) Yeah, basically.

    20. CW

      Yeah.

    21. GM

      With the hope that like, um ... Yeah, I'm just trying to think of some b- like bad news, like oh, your girlfriend's just broken up with you, good-

    22. CW

      Opportunity to, "She was a bitch, anyway."

    23. GM

      ... opportunity to spend more, yeah, spend more, spend more time with yourself. Um-

    24. CW

      (laughs)

    25. GM

      But then when something ... Oh, just, just made 100 million pounds. Oh bad, you might lose your ambition. You know what I mean? You've got to constantly have that-

    26. CW

      Oh yeah, to, to fact check yourself.

    27. GM

      Yeah, it's some weird zen paradox going on constantly playing.

    28. CW

      Another go- great example actually from a podcast earlier this year with Alex Hutchinson, who wrote the book Endure. So this is the definition of anti-fragile as far as I'm concerned. He's got elite performing athletes of varying degrees on the top end sat on a bike doing a VO2 max test, they've got a face mask on, which is controlling the air in and out of their lungs.... and these guys are doing maths questions on an iPad while they're doing it. So, they're at a fairly high heart rate, they're completing these maths questions on the iPad on the bike. So, they don't actually need to think much. It's not a cognitively demanding task to exercise, legs are just turning, but it is a cognitively demanding task they've got on the screen in front of them. Then they start to push their heart rate a little bit higher, a little bit higher, and get them really quite far up into the high percentages of their max. Then they restrict the air through the mask so that it's like breathing through a straw-

    29. GM

      Mm-hmm.

    30. CW

      ... or breathing at altitude. And the absolute best performers, obviously a lot of people there, cognition drops, they're distracted, they feel uncomfortable, the absolute best performers get better at their maths problems when they restrict the air through their mouth, because that's when they start to lean in to that discomfort-

  3. 30:00 – 45:00

    Availability bias. …

    1. GM

      "I've thought more about Harry Potter in the last 20 minutes than I had in my entire life," just because there's a fucking Harry Potter jigsaw on the floor.

    2. CW

      Availability bias.

    3. GM

      So like at, at the minute, um, I was chatting to, uh, one of the guys from work and there's some digestive biscuits in the kitchen. And none of us like digestive biscuits, we're eating digestive biscuits every single day 'cause they're just there in the-

    4. CW

      Yeah.

    5. GM

      ... in the jar, the see-through jar. Um, and yet whatever's available to you...... um, you've got to almost instill willpower to avoid it.

    6. CW

      Mm-hmm.

    7. GM

      Which means that, uh, given enough time, given enough lack of sleep, given enough X, Y, Z, you're probably gonna give in at some point.

    8. CW

      Mm-hmm.

    9. GM

      So yeah, design the environment is key.

    10. CW

      There's a, a really good example again, Gabriel Weinberg, uh, Sarah Lichtenstein did a study where people were asked about 41 leading causes of death, and they massively overestimated the risk of sensationalized types. So tornadoes, floods, botulism, or smallpox vaccines were 50 times overestimated, and stroke and diabetes were 100 times underestimated.

    11. GM

      Interesting.

    12. CW

      Because the availability bias of the news, and that links into filter bubble, of course, which is like a, a, a echo chamber that occurs due to this availability bias that's reinforced by the algorithms that we see online, because what you agree with, you will tend to click on more, which then reinforces feeding you more of this stuff because the system thinks, "Oh, he's clicking on that, therefore he wants to see more of that." But as Jordan Peterson says, "Be friends with people that want the best for you" doesn't mean with, be friends that, with people who tell you what you want to hear. Very different. The kid always wants sweets doesn't mean the kid, that sweets is always good for the kid.

    13. GM

      Mm-hmm.

    14. CW

      So the system constantly feeding you things that you agree with isn't necessarily the best for you.

    15. GM

      But the issue with that, and I have this, is that how do you then go about fixing this problem of social media?

    16. CW

      Yeah.

    17. GM

      Um, so obviously somebody who knows this space quite well, um, that people will insist on, okay, well, well Facebook needs to change its algorithms where it gives people content they don't want to see, but then they wouldn't spend time on the platform.

    18. CW

      Mm-hmm.

    19. GM

      So it's, it, I'm, I'm looking at, if you look at Mark Zuckerberg, you kind of get your decisions a little bit.

    20. CW

      Oh.

    21. GM

      And I, I look at it and go, because you've seen the, the recent news about the, um, the American Senate where they want to basically have it installed in the app that once somebody's scrolled so much, they get cut off and you go, "Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, what? This is some weird George Orwell shit." And you know, it's Nancy from Florida who, who's heard about Instagram in an article and she's trying to enforce it. So that's the worst.

    22. CW

      So if we're emailing on WhatsApp...

    23. GM

      (laughs) Yeah, that, that exact sort of shit. But I've be- I think about this a bit, and I, I thought there's, there's two ways to potentially fix this problem. Um, first one is that instead of trying to fix, say, a heroin problem, look at the needles. So instead of trying to stop the heroin going around, the social media addiction, let's look at the needles, which is the smartphones, the, the pr- and app, um, uh, Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat, et cetera, are never gonna fix the problem because that, we'll come on to this in a second, but they, that's their incentives, that's their business model. They're never gonna stop doing it. McDonald's aren't going to start selling kale.

    24. CW

      Mm-hmm.

    25. GM

      I'm sure they have, but it was horrific, I imagine, right?

    26. CW

      (laughs)

    27. GM

      They only did it for a PR bid. But they're, they're never going to be their full products of kale. It's going to be greasy fries and a greasy burger because that's what people go there for and that's what they're incentivized to do and that's what their business model is. So instead, the people who have the power, uh, Apple and Google who own Android, obviously. So what you need to do, they've re- recently released the screen time stuff, but why isn't it that people can't, let's say you flip, I call it like the ultimate judo move, where you flip social media or the mental models that social media have about the way they've conditioned people on its head. And with the screen time stuff, you create a social network, what I can see out of my friends who spent the most amount or the least amount of time on Instagram, and it's ranked with them at the top of the leaderboard.

    28. CW

      Mm-hmm.

    29. GM

      And that would be quite a cool feature. And then the final one that they should do is if it's decide, if it's dec- oh, what I think they should do, um, is if it's decided that these things are bad for people's mental health, okay, well, let's tax them at 5% or 10% or whatever that tax is agreed to be, which would be billions of dollars. And instead of focusing it on government bodies that don't have a clue what they're going to do, just do an XPRIZE where, okay, whichever top 20 entrepreneurs come up with a solution that's falsifiable by science in terms of helping people's mental health, they get the funding.

    30. CW

      Mm-hmm.

  4. 45:00 – 1:00:00

    Mm-hmm. So Roy, for…

    1. GM

      clip quite regularly, everyone who watches it goes, "Oh, fuck, that's what life basically is. We're just playing a game of Roy."

    2. CW

      Mm-hmm. So Roy, for the people that are listening, Roy is a scene from Rick and Morty. Uh, Morty goes into a virtual reality game where he's born, becomes an NFL player, lives the life of this guy called Roy, then he dies at the end, comes back out, but he's lived this whole life, right? Comes back out, and Rick then does a, like, analysis of how he played-

    3. GM

      Yeah, yeah.

    4. CW

      ... how he played the game. And it, you're totally right, it is that, the ability to view things with that broad perspective and to take-

    5. GM

      Mm-hmm.

    6. CW

      ... yourself out of the situation is a big part of it. So what I want to move on to is, I can't remember what we did last time, but let's quickly go through Hanlon's Razor, Occam's Razor, and then let's do MacGill's Razor.

    7. GM

      Let's do it again.

    8. CW

      Yet again, internet, if we can find something to rebrand it with, then-

    9. GM

      Um.

    10. CW

      ... please feel free.

    11. GM

      So I guess, uh, Occam's Razor is probably the most, like, well-known one from philosophy of if in doubt, you go with the, i- if you're presented with two similar arguments, um, and you can't make your mind up on which one, you go with the most simplest solution. Or you, the reason why it's called a razor is because you lean towards it. People often, I think, and again, I might not know this well enough, but people often think that therefore the simplest solution's always the answer. No, no, no. You assume the simplest solution is the answer, but then you work from there and you look for counter-evidence, et cetera. But you assume that. Whereas Hanlon's Razor's another version of that where if you're pre- let's say somebody's pissed you off, um, and you have equal evidence, was it out of malice or was it out of them not just thinking at all?

    12. CW

      S- do not attribute to, uh, malice what can be afforded to stupidity.

    13. GM

      Exactly. So, uh, Hanlon's Razor is just assume that it was down to their stupidity or it was down to their negative thinking-

    14. CW

      Negligence, yeah.

    15. GM

      ... it wasn't because they're a bad person. And then the razor I have-

    16. CW

      (laughs)

    17. GM

      ... um, is if presented with two situations, choose the one, uh, that will bring about the most amount of luck. And I'd say this is, if I had to give, I always say every episode if I was to pick one minute, I wanna, and I'll pick a different one each fucking episode.

    18. CW

      Well, that's fine.

    19. GM

      But this, I guess it, I guess as I get older, these things change, right?

    20. CW

      Yeah, they change.

    21. GM

      And I'd say in terms of actual output towards me and what I do, and again, I don't think I've done anything particularly special yet, um, or in general, in that this one by far has the most amount of impact. So I'll get, I'll give you, like, more practical examples of this. So, uh, quite recently, um, a guy was messaging me, and we were supposed to go for a drink, and he was like, "Oh, should we go, oh, should we go for a drink tonight or should we delay it?" And I was like going, and I remember I just caught myself, and I was going, "What's gonna bring about the most luck here? Me going and sitting at home and just chilling out and doing nothing, or going for a drink with a like-minded guy I've never met before, um, and seeing what happens?" And of course, I was like, "Well, definitely the latter is." But even though naturally I was going, "I just, I'm tired, I want to go home," I was like, "Okay, let's just pick the luckiest option." As a result, lots of stuff came off the back of that, um, and constantly looking for where, okay, I've got two potential decision trees to go down here. Which one do I think is gonna bring about the most amount of luck? And constantly doing that. One of my favorite examples is my, my mates, uh, James and Reece, when they were at a Drake concert-

    22. CW

      Mm-hmm.

    23. GM

      ... and they're at the M-E-N, uh, th- those two guys are massive Drake fans. And they were both in the toilet, so my mate James is proper into, like, sneakers, he's one of the sneaker heads, and he sees a, a massive guy, um, in the toilets, and he says, "Mate, I love your shoes." And he just, just randomly compliments a stranger-

    24. CW

      Mm-hmm.

    25. GM

      ... and he gets cha-

    26. CW

      Hand on penis?

    27. GM

      (laughs) Hand on penis, yeah.

    28. CW

      Was he hand on penis?

    29. GM

      He was doing the whole, the, uh, the cross move, yeah.

    30. CW

      They were hands on each other's penis?

  5. 1:00:00 – 1:10:09

    Mm. …

    1. GM

      most of these cognitive biases and stuff, rather than trying to fight them, which is what a lot of people seem to do as soon as they get in that, that whole psychological ra- like, rabbit hole.

    2. CW

      Mm.

    3. GM

      Rather than trying to fight them, just use them. Like, so it's again, if you realize, "Okay, whatever I identify as, um, it's going to be very, very difficult for me to break that."

    4. CW

      Mm-hmm.

    5. GM

      Rather than trying to break that-

    6. CW

      Mm.

    7. GM

      ... and going, "Oh no, I'm the guy who can i- defy his identity." No, don't do that. Why don't you just identify as what you actually want to use and use those weird little cognitive biases as a way forward? And I think that's the most, like, meta mental model thing I've found is rather than trying to fix your own cognitive biases ... Of course you want to almost play defense where you have to be-

    8. CW

      Want to be aware of them.

    9. GM

      Yeah, you want to be aware of them, even though you probably can't be that aware. Just use them. Like, use certain stuff, realize that you're a, a shaved chimp with millions of years of evolution and you, you're-

    10. CW

      Highest ROI score.

    11. GM

      ... probably not gonna write, rewrite the programming yourself and yeah, just go for the highest ROI score.

    12. CW

      Yeah. I think, um, certainly, for instance, we're talking about the difficulty in retraining your identity, let's say, whatever mental model-

    13. GM

      Mm-hmm.

    14. CW

      ... you want to choose that to come up with. Why not say, "I'm a happy person. I'm a positive person." Tell your friends.

    15. GM

      Yeah.

    16. CW

      If you tell your friends, "I'm a happy person. I'm a positive person."... you, you're now socially accountable to your mate. "Hang on, I thought you said you were a happy person. A, a, a, like, positive person." Oh, shit, that's something that I want, that is pretty much indefensibly a good idea for me to do. Like, what, where are you gonna go from there?

    17. GM

      Mm-hmm.

    18. CW

      Like, you, you want to continue to do that.

    19. GM

      So I spent... Y- y- I was the... When I was younger, I was fascinated by, like, discipline and pushing myself, and I found that I could perform... The only time I stuck at habits for six months and could pick up a new habit every single month was when I had an app, uh, called HabitShare.

    20. CW

      (laughs)

    21. GM

      Where every month, I'd have various different friends that would say, "Okay, I'm doing this habit this month. What are you gonna do? Loser buys dinner at the end of the month."

    22. CW

      Mm-hmm.

    23. GM

      And HabitShare, they can see if you check in that day, you get push notifications when they check in-

    24. CW

      (laughs)

    25. GM

      ... and you're directly competing against one another. And I didn't, I didn't... All of a sudden, I didn't need any willpower. I didn't need any discipline. I just used the cognitive bias of, of-

    26. CW

      Outsource it.

    27. GM

      ... being asked what other people are thinking about me. Because again, we're social creatures. Rather than try and fight that-

    28. CW

      Mm-hmm.

    29. GM

      ... let's just use that.

    30. CW

      I mean, for the listeners at home, I was getting sent screenshots of your HabitShare thing, and I'm not even on HabitShare.

Episode duration: 1:28:53

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