Inversion Learning by writing.
About
About Me
I’m a former engineer and product leader for software companies, recently retired on sabbatical. I am using this blog to write thoughts as I learn things. As much as I want to influence, my larger goal is to stress test my own thinking by writing in a public forum.
I’m a bit older, grayer, and have more facial hair (both beard and brow) than this picture, but you get the general idea:
Thanks for reading!
Subjects
I’m currently spending a lot of my time learning in the following areas:
- How to make better decisions (mental models)
- Applied data science (Python, Pandas, PyTorch, etc.)
- Issues important to me (education, social justice, etc.)
The title of the blog is “Inversion” and is named after a mental model by the same name. From Farnam Street:
It is not enough to think about difficult problems one way. You need to think about them forwards and backward. Inversion often forces you to uncover hidden beliefs about the problem you are trying to solve. “Indeed,” says Munger, “many problems can’t be solved forward.
It’s a fascinating mental model. As product people, it’s easy to get excited about the innovation we can see when we look forward. We think in terms of technical solutions that are the magical cure for our problems. But, take something more intractable like equity in schools. Rather than thinking of innovation to create opportunity, shouldn’t we also look at things that are actively reducing opportunity? Having a list of things that we should stop doing now, is likely as effective as a list of things we should start.
Of course, I don’t want to do all of my thinking with just this one mental model. I want to build a latticework of models from which to analyze subjects that are importantly to me personally. I just named the blog after my favorite.
That’s the idea. I hope to write regularly, but more importantly: eloquently.
Technical Details
- Built using Jekyll
- Site theme Lanyon, created by @mdo
- Hosted for free on GitHub Pages