First Principles: Elon Musk on the Power of Thinking for Yourself by James Clear, author of
Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones: Clear, James: 9780735211292: Amazon.com: Booksreasoning from first principles,
is one of the most effective strategies you can employ for
- breaking down complicated problems and
- generating original solutions.
It also might be the single best approach
to learn how to think for yourself.
example: rockets for SpaceX, and batteries for Tesla electric cars:
the cost of materials was much smaller than the cost of final components;
this means that if production process was re-organizes, it is possible to make them much cheaper.
“Physics teaches you to reason from first principles rather than by analogy."
Musk said in an interview.
What is a rocket made of? Aerospace-grade aluminum alloys, plus some titanium, copper, and carbon fiber. Then I asked, 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.”
A first principle is a basic assumption that cannot be deduced any further.
Over two thousand years ago, Aristotle defined a first principle as
“the first basis from which a thing is known.”
First principles thinking is a fancy way of saying “think like a scientist.”
Scientists don’t assume anything. They start with questions like,
What are we absolutely sure is true? What has been proven?
Rene Descartes, the French philosopher and scientist, embraced this approach
with a method now called Cartesian Doubt in which he would
“systematically doubt everything he could possibly doubt
until he was left with what he saw as purely indubitable truths.”
Scientific inquiry includes creating a hypothesis through inductive reasoning,
testing it through experiments and statistical analysis,
and adjusting or discarding the hypothesis based on the results.
