First Principles Thinking.
The building blocks of true knowledge. Inspiration from another article but I've added some of my own thoughts and shortened it down to the fundamental truths you need to know.
First-principles thinking is the best way to reverse-engineer complicated problems and unleash creative possibility. It's one of the best ways to learn to think for yourself and unlock your creative potential.
The idea is to break down complicated problems into basic elements and then reassemble them from the ground up.
This approach was used by the philosopher Aristotle and is used now by Elon Musk and Charlie Munger. It allows them to cut through the fog of shoddy reasoning and inadequate analogies to see opportunities that others miss.
“I don’t know what’s the matter with people: they don’t learn by understanding; they learn by some other way—by rote or something. Their knowledge is so fragile!” — Richard Feynman
Reasoning by first principles removes the ideas of assumptions. What remains is the essentials. First principles thinking allows you to reason from the fundamental truths and logic, not from analogy or opinions.
The Coach and the Play Stealer
Every move or play we see in the NFL was at some point created by someone who had an idea and tested it. That's what coaches do. They assess what's possible , along with weaknesses of the other team and the capabilities of his own players, and create plays that benefit their team in some way.
The coach reasons from first principles and the play stealer works off what's already been done. The play stealer has copied something that someone else has created. When something goes wrong, the coach understands what the play was designed to accomplish and where it went wrong, so he can easily fix his mistake.
The play stealer has no idea what’s going on. He doesn’t understand the difference between something that didn’t work and something that played into the other team’s strengths.
Elon Musk would identify the play stealer as the person who reasons by analogy, and the coach as someone who reasons by first principles
The Chef and the Cook
The difference between reasoning by first principles and reasoning by analogy is like the difference between being a chef and being a cook
The chef, who reasons by first principles, invents recipes. He knows the ingredients and the way to cook it.
The chef understands the flavour profiles and combination that he doesn't need to use a recipe
The cook, who reasons by analogy, uses a recipe. He creates something that's already been created.
If the cook lost the recipe, he'd be screwed
Authority
So much of what we believe is based on higher figure telling us that something is true. As children we learn to stop questioning when we are told "Because I said so." As adults, we learn to stop questioning when people say "Because that's how it works."
If we never learn to take something apart, test the assumptions, and reconstruct it, we end up trapped in what other people tell us.
First-principles reasoning let us see the world how it is and see what is possible.
Techniques for Establishing First Principles
Clarifying your thinking and explaining the origins of your ideas (Why do I think this? What exactly do I think?)
Clarifying your thinking and explaining the origins of your ideas (Why do I think this? What exactly do I think?)
Looking for evidence (How can I back this up? What are the sources?)
Considering alternative perspectives (What might others think? How do I know I am correct?)
Examining consequences and implications (What if I am wrong? What are the consequences if I am?)
Questioning the original questions (Why did I think that? Was I correct? What conclusions can I draw from the reasoning process?)
This process stops you from relying on your gut and limits strong emotional responses.
Examples of First Principles in Action
I think people’s thinking process is too bound by convention or analogy to prior experiences. It’s rare that people try to think of something on a first principles basis. They’ll say, “We’ll do that because it’s always been done that way.” Or they’ll not do it because “Well, nobody’s ever done that, so it must not be good. But that’s just a ridiculous way to think. You have to build up the reasoning from the ground up—“from the first principles” is the phrase that’s used in physics. You look at the fundamentals and construct your reasoning from that, and then you see if you have a conclusion that works or doesn’t work, and it may or may not be different from what people have done in the past.
Musk starts out with something he wants to achieve, like building a rocket. Then he starts with the first principles of the problem.
“What are the physics of it? How much time will it take? How much will it cost? How much cheaper can I make it? There’s this level of engineering and physics that you need to make judgments about what’s possible and interesting.
Rockets are absurdly expensive, which is a problem because Musk wants to send people to Mars. And to send people to Mars, you need cheaper rockets. So he asked himself, “What is a rocket made of? Aerospace-grade aluminum alloys, plus some titanium, copper, and carbon fiber. And … what is the value of those materials on the commodity market? It turned out that the materials cost of a rocket was around two percent of the typical price.”
Why, then, is it so expensive to get a rocket into space? Musk, a notorious self-learner with degrees in both economics and physics, literally taught himself rocket science. He figured that the only reason getting a rocket into space is so expensive is that people are stuck in a mindset that doesn’t hold up to first principles. With that, Musk decided to create SpaceX and see if he could build rockets himself from the ground up.
I think it’s important to reason from first principles rather than by analogy. So the normal way we conduct our lives is, we reason by analogy. We are doing this because it’s like something else that was done, or it is like what other people are doing… with slight iterations on a theme. And it’s … mentally easier to reason by analogy rather than from first principles. First principles is kind of a physics way of looking at the world, and what that really means is, you … boil things down to the most fundamental truths and say, “okay, what are we sure is true?” … and then reason up from there. That takes a lot more mental energy.
Exploring First Principles in Your Daily Life
Letting others think for us means that we're using their analogies, their conventions, and their possibilities.
Analogies can be important, they make complex problems easier to communicate and increase understanding. Analogies, however, limit our beliefs about what's possible
A common way that people limit what’s possible is to tell themselves that all the good ideas are taken. However, people have been saying this for hundreds of years but people keep starting and inventing different ideas.
Reasoning by first principles is useful when you are (1) doing something for the first time, (2) dealing with complexity, and (3) trying to understand a situation that you’re having problems with. In all of these areas, your thinking gets better when you stop making assumptions and you stop letting others frame the problem for you. Thinking in first principles allows you to adapt to a changing environment, deal with reality, and seize opportunities that others can’t see.