An Opinionated Guide to Conceptual Modeling

Sri and Conceptual Models

I've always wondered why I had such difficulty learning, but otherwise seemed to have a healthy scoopful of intelligence built on understanding. It seemed that other people did not have this problem absorbing new material quickly and rushing into new areas of endeavor with the greatest confidence. By comparison, I would get stuck on the tiniest things, like when I was forced to learn piano as a child: "Why are some keys white and others black?"

In adult life, the same hiccup happened when I had to learn Javascript back in 2014 to build a web app. Why are things like this? Am I stupid? I would wonder, until I read Douglas Crawfords Javascript: The Good Parts which confirmed that it wasn't me: it was the language design itself. Don't lose hope! Here are ways to use the good parts to implement clean concepts. Thus reassured, I could move forward with confidence and avoid the pitfalls that other people just seemed to take for granted.

This pattern of frustration-followed-by-epiphany has occurred many times over my life. I now realize that I am constantly building conceptual models of the world, whereas the vast majority of teaching materials try to describe the patterns without the underlying principles that give rise to them.

So that's the focus of this entire website, really.

Conceptual Models Elsewhere

Over time, this will blossom into a unique collection of concepts that is hopefully useful to others while also being an accurate reflection of "me". In the meantime, I'll maintain a list of other sources as I come across them.

Reference: Model-based Thinking

• The Farnum Street site has a collection of mental models that is also available in book form!

Reference: Human Reasoning

• Formal and Informal Fallacies

Reference: Human Systems Modeling

• book: The 48 Laws of Power
• Visual Semiotics and Gestalt
• Cognitive Science, Psychology

Reference: Narrative Systems

• Three Act Structure
• Dan Harmon's Story Cicle
• The Hero's Journey

Reference: Transformation Systems

• State Machines
• Mathematics

Reference: Lore-driven Systemized Interpretative Synthesis

These are systems that are quite elaborate but based in lore to give it meaning. The systems built on top of the lore, though, can be quite interesting models of how humans understand human behavior.

• Tarot Cards and readings (Rider-Waite in particular)
• Astrology
• I-Ching
• Religon
• Narrative-based role-playing games like Dungeons & Dragons

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