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First Principles Thinking

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Re: First Principles Thinking

#11

Post by weltensturm »

j7ake wrote: post #8

This is a naive article with no critical thought from the author. It feels like the author is just rephrasing quotes from people like Elon Musk (who claims to use first principles thinking). Progress in real life are mostly made by trial and error, and then the underlying theory or first principles are solidified later (eg jet engines, cooking recipes, penicillin). The cases where things start from theory to some fin…

All things start from theory, just not the kind you think about. It seems you are referring to the academic style of theories, but in reality it is much closer to your mentioned trial and error - if you think about it, trial and error also requires guesses and theories to be viable, just that they don't come in written form, but rather from intuition. And I think intuition is the fundamental building block of first principles thinking or whatever they want to call it.

Re: First Principles Thinking

#12

Post by guerrilla »

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #10
guerrilla wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would like to add to your insight that different situations also benefit from different approaches; and sometimes different approaches to the same situations produce interesting results.

I've always thought of "genius," as "looking at it differently," as opposed to "smarter." From what history shows us, that's not a bad observation.

I think smarter is probably a necessary condition for genius though. Dumb or average people looking at things differently isn't usually helpful when it comes to really hard problems.

Re: First Principles Thinking

#14

Post by guerrilla »

j7ake wrote: post #8

This is a naive article with no critical thought from the author. It feels like the author is just rephrasing quotes from people like Elon Musk (who claims to use first principles thinking). Progress in real life are mostly made by trial and error, and then the underlying theory or first principles are solidified later (eg jet engines, cooking recipes, penicillin). The cases where things start from theory to some fin…

> Progress in real life are mostly made by trial and error, and then the underlying theory or first principles are solidified later (eg jet engines, cooking recipes, penicillin).

I like to think of the grand theories as compression actually. Before ZFC, we just had a ton of knowledge and we asked if can we derive this from some set of blatantly obvious axioms and a group of geniuses basically did something like LZW and now we have ZFC and other such foundational theories.

Re: First Principles Thinking

#15

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

guerrilla wrote: post #12
ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've always thought of "genius," as "looking at it differently," as opposed to "smarter." From what history shows us, that's not a bad observation.

I think smarter is probably a necessary condition for genius though. Dumb or average people looking at things differently isn't usually helpful when it comes to really hard problems.

Fair point, but I wonder if a lot of the folks that we consider "geniuses," throughout history, would have actually scored higher on an IQ test, than some of their peers. I have known "off-the-charts" smart people (like perfect SAT at 14), that are extremely rigid and unimaginative.

They just need to be smart enough to implement or express their orthogonal point of view.

Re: First Principles Thinking

#16

Post by eternityforest »

First principles thinking applies more to science and invention than engineering. And it's easy to misuse and make it into philosophical thinking.

Musk appears to have derived his dislike of LIDAR more from ideas than technical studies. Most of the rest of industry seems to disagree...

First principles thinking carries the implicit values of keeping things simple enough to reason about that way. It doesn't deal well with suppliers and ecosystems.

In tech, "Everyone else does it this way" IS a technical advantage because of economies of scale and compatibility.

If your custom thing is just right for your application, it's probably a liability to the ecosystem in general, because "just right" tech is tuned for one product without concern for the whole system.

Re: First Principles Thinking

#17

Post by ragnese »

A lot of negative comments here, so I'm going to throw out some positivity/praise.

I do think there is value in putting a name to the process of analyzing what assumptions, mental models, schemata, etc are more fundamental than others.

I don't generally approve of the hero worship of economically successful individuals like Musk et al, or trying to futilely guess at "the" cause of their success. But, that doesn't mean that Mr. Musk didn't have a point when he explained that his undergrad degree in physics encouraged him to look at the "everyone knows XYZ is best/possible/impossible" truisms and figure out what conditions led to that conclusion and whether those conditions actually apply to the specific situation he cares about.

The same thing happens in programming. How many times have you, or someone you know, tried to translate a "best practice" from one programming language or framework to another one only to realize that best practices are context-dependent? If that's ever happened to you, you would've benefited from "first principles thinking". WHY is that best practice recommended? What problems is it trying to help you avoid? Is that problem likely to occur in your new programming language? Can you even apply the best practice in the new language? If you can, will it still actually prevent the problem it was designed to prevent?

Whether or not the chef/cook analogy is accurate, I don't think the main takeaway should be that chefs are "better" than cooks as people. I think the point should be that sometimes "cook"-ing is fine, but if you want to become an expert at something, you need to go beyond following "recipes" and figure out how it all works under the hood.

Re: First Principles Thinking

#18

Post by pc86 »

guerrilla wrote: post #4

This is so incredibly bad. The second part of the main thesis is never justified, just asserted. The majority of this is a bunch of unjustified assertions barely connected where almost all actual connections are fallacious. Then some of this is just a hacked up ideolect that redefines things like chefs and cooks with no respect for the empirical world or how chefs, cooks or others actually use those words or how any…

> The majority of this is a bunch of unjustified assertions barely connected

This is true of 99% of blog posts and HN comments which contain the phrase "first principles" unironically.

Re: First Principles Thinking

#19

Post by guerrilla »

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #15
guerrilla wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think smarter is probably a necessary condition for genius though. Dumb or average people looking at things differently isn't usually helpful when it comes to really hard problems.

Fair point, but I wonder if a lot of the folks that we consider "geniuses," throughout history, would have actually scored higher on an IQ test, than some of their peers. I have known "off-the-charts" smart people (like perfect SAT at 14), that are extremely rigid and unimaginative. They just need to be smart enough to implement or express their orthogonal point of view.

> I have known "off-the-charts" smart people (like perfect SAT at 14), that are extremely rigid and unimaginative.

Yes, being smart is necessary but not sufficient.

Re: First Principles Thinking

#20

Post by eternityforest »

RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #9

I don’t think chefs apply first principles. For example, have you ever met a chef that was able to sketch out the 3-d structure of the various molecules and that used that information to guide their recipe? No most chefs are using finely tuned heuristics about how different ingredients interact.

Not only that, they're using a heavy amount of tradition.

They can't just do any random thing even if it tastes good, unless they're experimental modern types, because Italian has to be different from Mexican or people will wonder what is going on.

Most people seem to like the current nationality based food traditions. It lets you celebrate your own heritage, and also explore others.

We can make things healthier, add variants, make vegetarian versions, etc, but not many see to reinvent Italian or American Chinese from scratch.

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