Mental Models : Inversion
Thinking model : how do you think when trying to solve a problem or anything? straight one way right, now flip it - invert it, what can prevent me from solving this problem?
The test of first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposing ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function. One should, for example, be able to see that things are hopeless yet be determined to make them otherwise. F. Scott Fitzgerald
Introduction
Inversion is a powerful tool to improve your thinking because it helps you identify and remove obstacles to success. The root of inversion is “invert,” which means to upend or turn upside down. As a thinking tool, it means approaching a situation from the opposite end of the natural starting point. Most of us tend to think one way about a problem: forward. Inversion allows us to flip the problem around and think backward. Sometimes it’s good to start at the beginning, but it can be more useful to start at the end.
Inversion provides an objective way to explore the problem by thinking the opposite of what we seek. This form of reverse questioning can help us inquire our own assumptions, and beliefs and in turn gain a better perspective to find answers to our original questions with greater clarity and understanding.
Our natural mode of thinking looks for answers to:
What can I do to solve this problem?
What should I do to achieve this outcome?
What strategy or process will help me get where I want to be?
How can I succeed in this project?
How do I sell this product or service?
How do I innovate new creativity in this particular domain?
How to debug this code bug? How it will run?
It’s not natural to think the opposite of what we desire when the solution is right in front of us in confirmation of what we believe. Our mind does not seek limitations of our own assumptions unless we put a conscious effort to learn it by inverting the query.
Putting the same questions through the inversion model will require us to answer:
What events, behavior, or action can prevent me from solving this problem?
What events, behavior or action can prevent me from achieving this outcome?
What gaps in strategy or process can stop me to get where I want to be?
How can I fail in this project?
How this product or service will not sell?
When and why this particular code block will not run?
Think of it this way: Avoiding stupidity is easier than seeking brilliance. Combining the ability to think forward and backward allows you to see reality from multiple angles.
There are two approaches to applying inversion in your life.
Start by assuming that what you’re trying to prove is either true or false, then show what else would have to be true.
Instead of aiming directly for your goal, think deeply about what you want to avoid and then see what options are left over.
Principle and Process
One of the theoretical foundations for this type of thinking comes from psychologist Kurt Lewin. In the 1930s he came up with the idea of force field analysis, which essentially recognizes that in any situation where change is desired, successful management of that change requires applied inversion.
Here is a brief explanation of his process:
Identify the problem
Define your objective
Identify the forces that support change towards your objective
Identify the forces that impede change towards the objective
Strategize a solution. This may involve both augmenting or adding to the forces in step 3, and reducing or eliminating the forces in step 4.
Even if we are quite logical, most of us stop after step 3. Once we figure out our objective, we focus on the things we need to put in place to make it happen, the new training or education, the messaging, and marketing. But Lewin theorized that it can be just as powerful to remove obstacles to change.
The inversion happens between steps 3 and 4. Whatever angle you choose to approach your problem from, you need to then follow with consideration of the opposite angle. Think about not only what you could do to solve a problem, but what you could do to make it worse—and then avoid doing that, or eliminate the conditions that perpetuate it.
Use Cases
Marc Andreesen: Red Team
Marc Andreessen, a prolific Silicon Valley investor and the co-founder of Netscape, has an inversion system for stress-testing investment ideas.
Andreessen uses a “Red Team” that takes the other side of an investment argument. This team comes in and tries to destroy your investment idea. And if you’re still yelling out all the reasons why it’s a winner after it has been ripped to shreds, then maybe they’ll invest. Ferriss calls it a ‘disagree and commit’ culture.
Andreessen also finds value in studying opposites. Even though he’s a start-up tech investor, he has learned the value investing philosophies of successful investors like Warren Buffett and Seth Klarman.
This is another form of inversion - studying the other side of your general process.
Charlie Munger: Strategizing Map
In his annual address at the Daily Journal Corporation shareholder’s meeting in 2020, Charlie talks about how inversion helped him as a meteorologist in World War II.
In the war, Munger was tasked with drawing weather maps. But what he was actually doing was clearing pilots to take flights.
Charlie asked a simple question: “Suppose I want to kill a lot of pilots. What would be the easy way to do it?”
He figured out there were only two ways to do that:
1) Get the planes into cold temperatures that would cause them to ice up and crash, or
2) Get the pilot into an area where he would run out of fuel before he could safely land.
So, Munger avoided these two scenarios at all costs. He became a better meteorologist, and probably saved lives, by inverting the problem.
Inversion Leads to Innovation: CCTV
Using inversion to identify your end goal and work backward from there can lead to innovation. If you had to make a guess on who invented closed-circuit television (CCTV) in the United States, whom would you choose? A large institution like the Department of Defense? A telecom company? Some techie in a police department? You probably wouldn’t name the late Marie Van Brittan Brown, who, along with her husband Albert Brown, filed the first patent for a closed-circuit monitoring system in 1966. She was a nurse, living in the Jamaica neighborhood of Queens, New York, and as such worked irregular hours. When she was home alone, she felt unsafe. In an interesting example of inversion, she decided to do something about it.
In the same situation, most of us would work forward, thinking of safety-oriented additions we can make to our existing set-up, like more locks, or having a friend stay over. Van Brittan Brown, however, went a step further, asking what would need to change in order for her to feel safer. She identified that it was her inability to see and communicate with persons outside her door that made her feel the most vulnerable when home alone. Working backward, her thinking may have gone something like this: what can I do to change that situation? What would have to be in place? Van Brittan Brown followed this through, and CCTV was born.
Van Brittan Brown and her husband designed a camera system that would move between four holes in the door, feeding the images to a TV monitor set up in the home. The images would allow her to get a complete view of who was at the door, and additional technology allowed for communication with the person outside without the door being opened. Further, they developed a feature that would allow her to either let the person in or sound an alarm to notify a neighbor or watchman. To be fair, we will likely never know the thought process
He wins his battles by making no mistakes - Sun Tzu
Inversion shows us that we don’t always need to be geniuses, nor do we need to limit its application to mathematical and scientific proofs. Simply invert, always invert, when you are stuck. If you take the results of your inversion seriously, you might make a great deal of progress in solving your problems.