Poor Ash's Almanack: The Latticework of Mental Models

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A show about how to think better in the age of AI. Each episode explores a mental model: timeless ideas from psychology, economics, biology, and philosophy. These sharpen reasoning and decision-making. As AI accelerates information overload, human judgment has never been more valuable. We connect classic models to modern challenges so you can think clearly, act wisely, and stay grounded amid the noise.

Episodes

  1. 11/04/2025

    Nature vs. Nurture and Luxury Beliefs: A Mental Model with Complex Feedback Loops

    This episode explores the Nature vs. Nurture mental model, revealing it's not a simple "versus" but intead a complex, dynamic feedback loop. Biology sets the base-rate possibilities for our traits, while our environment, culture, and agency steer the final outcome. But what happens when ideology causes us to ignore this fundamental balance? We get Luxury Beliefs: status-enhancing ideas held by those who are insulated from their negative real-world consequences. This episode connects these two powerful models. We'll unpack how oversimplistic views of nature and nurture lead directly to problems such as the overdiagnosis of ADHD. Using Rob Henderson's framework, we'll show how these "luxury beliefs" create a dangerous "schema" gap, inflicting real costs on the most vulnerable by denying the complex truths of our human experience. Read the full model here: https://askeladdencapital.com/nature-vs-nurture-luxury-beliefs-mental-model/

    42 min

  2. 10/27/2025

    The Biggest Flame: Understanding and Solving the Attention Crisis In The Age of AI (Attention / Focus Mental Model)

    Focus / Attention / Creativity & Lateral Thinking Mental Model (incl. AI vs Humans)Attention is the ultimate currency of the modern world.Dive into the "Focus / Attention Mental Model (incl. AI vs Humans)" and discover why our ability to focus—described as the "biggest flame" in our lives today—is in a state of crisis. This deep dive explores how attention, the selective allocation of limited cognitive resources, is being systemically destroyed by an environment of constant interruption and algorithmic harvesting, which Johann Hari calls "stolen focus". Collective attention is measurably shrinking, sacrificing the depth needed for comprehension, memory, and creativity.Inside the Episode:• The Attention Crisis as a Structural Problem: Understand why the modern attention crisis is not a personal failing, but a systemic issue where technology has been engineered to hijack our dopamine circuits. Learn why willpower is not the solution—design beats discipline.• AI vs. Human Focus: Explore the fundamentally different ways humans and AI pay attention. Our brains operate like CPUs—great at sequential, complex reasoning and judgment. AI, powered by the transformer model, acts like a GPU—excelling at massive parallelism and boilerplate computation, but lacking deep causal judgment.• Leveraging Your Human Edge: Discover why AI can serve as an army of "infinite interns" by automating tedious tasks, freeing up your limited human attention for synthesis, calibration, and decision-making.• The Power of Lateral Thinking: Uncover the unique human advantage: lateral thinking and innovation. Breakthrough ideas rarely come from grinding; they emerge from the brain’s default mode network (DMN)—mind-wandering that weaves "distant associations" during rest. Learn why AIs are bad at this and how to cultivate this creative capacity.• Actionable Solutions: Adopt strategies for structural problem solving, including managing attention like cash flow, aligning deep work to your chronotype (biology), and mitigating the severe switching cost effect of "multitasking". Hear about how technology can be used against distraction, for instance, using AI to "batch" notifications instead of allowing a constant "drip of behavioral cocaine".In an era where AI reduces the marginal cost of content creation toward zero, human judgment and attention are our ultimate competitive advantage. Learn how to protect and cultivate this intellectual capital. Full writeup here: https://askeladdencapital.com/focus-attention-creativity-lateral-thinking-mental-model-incl-ai-vs-humans/

    27 min

  3. 10/16/2025

    Multidisciplinary Rationality: An Intro to Mental Models

    Welcome to the podcast on Multidisciplinary Rationality and Mental Models, where we explore how to make meaningfully more effective decisions by understanding the most important and timeless concepts underlying reality. In an age defined by the explosion of artificial intelligence, refining our human judgment with the right mental models is more critical than ever. We draw inspiration from the late, great Charlie Munger, who noted that he had known "no wise people who didn't read all the time". This process involves reading broadly to learn mental models—timeless principles that apply across time and space—and developing a full understanding of how they interact in any given situation. Following this approach can help anyone who makes decisions—whether a parent, doctor, executive, or investor—become happier, healthier, wealthier, and more effective. Mental models serve as the necessary accurate map for navigating the world, providing the essential "point of view" that Alan Kay deemed "worth 80 IQ points". We explore crucial concepts like contrast bias and loss aversion, multicausality and probabilistic thinking, and anticipating unintended consequences (n-order impacts). We stress the importance of building a "latticework of mental models" to avoid the pitfalls of the Man With A Hammer syndrome and to accurately gauge your own Circle of Competence.This multidisciplinary approach not only turbocharges your ability to use AI but also serves as a cognitive immune system against "AI slop". By consciously applying models, we become critical interrogators of information, ensuring we account for factors like second-order effects or skewed incentives. This approach keeps uniquely human judgment as the final arbiter in complex, real-world situations.The content is part of Poor Ash's Almanack, a free, vertically-integrated resource designed to help you learn what is most immediately useful and helpful. We provide a latticework of mental models, reviews/notes/analysis on books, and guided learning journeys to assist you in putting in the time and thought necessary to synthesize and apply these concepts in your career and personal life. Stop wasting effort and start making wiser decisions today. To learn more, visit: askeladdencapital.com

    35 min
  • 3 Episodes

About

A show about how to think better in the age of AI. Each episode explores a mental model: timeless ideas from psychology, economics, biology, and philosophy. These sharpen reasoning and decision-making. As AI accelerates information overload, human judgment has never been more valuable. We connect classic models to modern challenges so you can think clearly, act wisely, and stay grounded amid the noise.

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