At first glance, this sentence seems contradictory. Since we are serious, how can we simplify things? Didn't you say that the more serious things are, the more difficult they are?

Take myself as an example.

When I first learned to cook, I got started quickly, and the things I made were even more delicious than the old hands who had been cooking for decades. The reason is very simple, because I read the menu, how to cut, how much seasoning to make, how long to cook, and how long to cook. It can be said that I cook with great care.

But there are two problems. One is that cooking is very slow, because I have to look at the menu when cooking (for example, cutting vegetables while cooking), so I can't operate at the same time. The other is that I can't do it without a menu. Therefore, cooking is a very troublesome thing for me.

Later, I cooked a lot of rice, and gradually explored some routines, such as cooking (frying garlic, cooking, adding salt monosodium glutamate, and starting the pot), first blanching the meat. These can be called models. It is much easier for me to cook with these models.

Therefore, for simplicity, we must master enough models. These models can be Charlie? Munger's cognitive view of psychology and economics can also be a mathematical model to understand the operation of the world.

Scott Page, head of the Center for Complexity Studies at the University of Michigan, once offered a course called "Model Thinking". More than 50,000 students registered on the line, and now more than1.20,000 * * people have watched the course.

After studying for a semester, Page's students will not stick to a certain angle in seeing the world. On the contrary, they will observe the world from many different angles. They will stand in a house with many windows and have the ability to look in many directions.

As Page said, my students should be able to better cope with the complex challenges they face: improving education, reducing poverty, achieving sustainable growth, finding meaningful jobs in the era of artificial intelligence, managing resources, and designing a strong and stable financial, economic and political system.

After such a great success, Page spent seven years writing a book, which is our protagonist "Model Thinking" today.

Let me throw cold water on you first The pattern described by Page is much more advanced than our cooking. To understand this book, you need to have a good mathematical foundation first. Although it is a book for the public, the mathematical formulas in it are not so easy to chew down. However, to understand the world, you really need to spend this time studying mathematics, because mathematics is also a very important tool for us to understand the world.

In the book, Page lists 24 model tools to understand the world, which can answer the following questions for you:

Given the length of the article, I will explain these models one by one in the following series of articles.

In Page's view, without a model, we can't understand the data stream that keeps sliding on the computer screen; Without the model, we will be influenced by various cognitive biases; Without models, our ability to process data will be greatly limited.

This model allows us to subtract from this increasingly complex world and simply think:

Don't rush to learn those models when you see this. As Page himself said, the models in model thinking are all wrong.

Why do you say that?

Under the current education system, teachers' teaching methods depend entirely on one-to-one logic, which means that a problem needs a model. For example, the teacher will tell us that in this case, Newton's first law should be applied; In that case, we should apply Newton's second law; In the third case, Newton's third law should be applied.

However, there are no simple questions in the world that can be answered in our books. If you only use a model to solve the problem, it can't help you solve the problem. From this point of view, each of these single models may be correct, but none of them is comprehensive. Facing all kinds of complex challenges and creating a world embracing wider educational achievements, we need not a single model, but a grid of multiple models.

So, if you use model thinking too much when reading, you may be stopped, but now you will make great progress by using multi-model thinking.