Mental Lattice
Mental models & game theory, explained clearly.
Explore the Game theory pillar →
Start here
- Dominant Strategy
Why "confess" beats staying silent no matter what your partner does.
- Nash Equilibrium
Why does everyone stay put even when they could all do better? The strategy point nobody wants to leave alone.
- Prisoner's dilemma
Why two rational actors betray each other even when cooperation would help them both.
- Schelling Point
How do two strangers meet in a city with no phones — and why does everyone guess the same spot?
- Tit-for-Tat
Why does copying your opponent's last move beat every clever strategy?
- Tragedy of the Commons
Why do rational individuals destroy the shared resource they all depend on?
Compare
- Nash equilibrium vs dominant strategy
One describes a single player's best move; the other describes the whole game sitting in a stable configuration.
- Prisoner's dilemma vs tragedy of the commons
Same logic of self-interest wrecking the group — two prisoners in cells versus a whole village at one well.
- Zero-sum game vs Positive-sum game
Whether the pie is fixed or can grow — and why that one fact flips optimal play from competition to cooperation.
Pillars
Decision-Making Under Uncertainty
Expected value, second-order thinking, inversion, base rates.
Competition & Cooperation
Game-theory core: Nash equilibrium, prisoner’s dilemma, tit-for-tat.
Incentives & Behavior
Principal–agent, Goodhart’s law, moral hazard, perverse incentives.
Information & Signaling
Asymmetric information, adverse selection, signaling, common knowledge.
Cognitive Biases & Judgment
Confirmation bias, anchoring, loss aversion, survivorship bias.
Systems & Complexity
Feedback loops, network effects, Pareto principle, compounding.
Risk & Probability
Fat tails, Kelly criterion, regression to the mean, risk of ruin.
Thinking Toolkit
First principles, inversion, Occam’s razor, Chesterton’s fence.