Paul Berens
Systems
A running list of useful frameworks, mental models, heuristics, and first principles:
Decision-making / Metrics
Economics
- Disposition Effect – Investors’ tendency to sell winning investments too early while holding losing investments too long
- Sunk Cost Fallacy – Continuing an endeavor due to past investment despite irrationality
- Opportunity Cost – The loss of potential gain from alternatives when one option is chosen
- Comparative Advantage (Ricardo) – Economic benefit from specialization even when one party has absolute advantage
- Time Preference Theory – How present consumption is valued versus future consumption
- Tragedy of the Commons – How individual rational behavior leads to depleting shared resources
- Moral Hazard – When parties take risks because they don’t bear the full costs
- Principal-Agent Problem – Conflicts of interest when someone acts on another’s behalf
- Cantillon Effect – How money creation benefits those closest to the source
- Gresham’s Law – “Bad money drives out good” in currency circulation
Epistemology
- I’m a Constructivist, but also believe it’s hard to get smarter without reading
- Literacy Threshold Theory – meaningful knowledge acquisition requires reaching certain threshold levels of literacy.
- We’ve got a growing knowledge-wisdom gap. (E.F. Schumacher’s “Small is Beautiful”)
- Be ever vigilant of fallacies (e.g., argumentum ad populum).
History/Civilization
Organization
Psychology/Behavior
- Cognitive biases (Availability Heuristic, etc.) (See Safetyism post)
- Status/Signaling (Veblen goods, stated vs. revealed preferences)
- Personal Utility Function and Financial Calculation Gap (gap between monetary returns and full economic utility) (e.g., housing rent vs. buy calculation)
Social Dynamics
- Network effects and Dunbar’s Number (see FB post)
- Game theory concepts (Prisoner’s Dilemma, coordination problems)
- Nassim Taleb’s Skin in the Game principle
Technology
Miscellanea