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Elon Musk on First Principles

blog.microlancer.com

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Re: Elon Musk on First Principles

#61

Post by graeme »

sillysaurus2 wrote: post #56
aridiculous wrote: post #31

Reasoning from first principles is ahistorical, and that is why it so rarely works in the real world. Political and social constructs inherited through time (like, say, the law) will butt heads against a "pure" new solution. You need the resources (and determination, will, etc) to overpower colossal systems we've arrived at through the progression of history. If you're going to hit homeruns like Musk, I think you mus…

This line of reasoning puts a glass ceiling on your own intelligence. Are you sure that's a good idea? "Oh well, I probably won't be able to anyway" seems a mistaken way to go about life. Or at least a dull one. I'd rather know the truth than believe everyone else's mistaken ideas. The only way to do that is via first principles. Personally, I rather like pg's belief: we're only accomplishing 1% of what's possible. M…

Very good point. Often there's very little cost to challenging conventional wisdom (think about it). If even 1/100 your attempts to challenge the CW produce results, it can be a winning strategy.

Re: Elon Musk on First Principles

#62

Post by thangalin »

gnaritas wrote: post #55
thangalin wrote: post #5

"Reasoning from first principles: What’s the least information I need to collect from the user to make the app functional?" Functional web apps do not need any user information. People should be able to use the app without having to submit any contact details. An account is created for them automatically, and, presuming they like the app, they can provide contact details later. Similarly, most apps do not require pas…

> so leveraging all the work that has gone into making e-mail secure is a win. What? Email isn't close to secure.

The point is that e-mail vendors (e.g., Google, Microsoft) have dedicated far more resources and effort to securing their e-mail software (e.g., GMail, Hotmail) than start-ups will, or can, dedicate for their own authentication component. (For example, how often are all GMail passwords been stolen?)

I am suggesting that the authentication process for e-mail is far more secure than what a start-up could produce to authenticate for their own site. I am not suggesting that e-mail is NSA-proof.

Re: Elon Musk on First Principles

#63

Post by stonemetal »

graeme wrote: post #51
wwkeyboard wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think "standing on the shoulders of giants" is the cliche you're looking for. - Looking over the examples from the blog post, those aren't really from 'first principles'. They are assuming cars and an internet and other huge innovations. I think the real message should be 'double check your assumptions'.

The parent is referring to a different phenomenon. "The weight of history" might be a way of describing it. In many domains you can't just start over fresh. "Standing on the shoulders of giants" refers to the idea that we owe much of our knowledge to those who came before us. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standing_on_the_shoulders_of_gi...

Does that make the "The weight of history" equivalent to "The weight of giants"? That is to say we owe much of our knowledge to those who came before even if that knowledge is wrong.

Re: Elon Musk on First Principles

#64

Post by eruditely »

bsdetector wrote: post #49

technical innovations that many thought impossible, like producing battery packs more cheaply than ever before. Really? Many people thought that cheaper battery packs were actually impossible? Maybe the rest of the article says something important, but when the second sentence is tripe like that I'm not going to stick around to find out.

What he said isn't even that big of a deal, the issue is more with you than with him. You actually just said that even if something important could be understood you will let your pettiness get in the way.

Re: Elon Musk on First Principles

#65

Post by eruditely »

bsdetector wrote: post #49

technical innovations that many thought impossible, like producing battery packs more cheaply than ever before. Really? Many people thought that cheaper battery packs were actually impossible? Maybe the rest of the article says something important, but when the second sentence is tripe like that I'm not going to stick around to find out.

What he said isn't even that big of a deal, the issue is more with you than with him. You actually just said that even if something important could be understood you will let your pettiness get in the way.

Re: Elon Musk on First Principles

#66

Post by xzephyr »

possibilistic wrote: post #46
xzephyr wrote: post #34

The so-called reason by analogy is just gradient descent to approach local optima in optmization. The "by first principle" is just providing an approximate (ideally convex) model and solve it analytically for global optima. The problem is generally very hard (#P hard), both for formulating the problem and solving it. Global optimum of course in theory is better, but the quality of your objective function and constrai…

I love this explanation. Do you happen to blog about optimization topics?

Ah, sorry no. I'm just interested in AI in general and constrained optimization has been the what I found to be the most general model for solving and giving insights into AI problems or any problems that require "intelligence".

Re: Elon Musk on First Principles

#67

Post by prawks »

pkinsky wrote: post #45
wwkeyboard wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think "standing on the shoulders of giants" is the cliche you're looking for. - Looking over the examples from the blog post, those aren't really from 'first principles'. They are assuming cars and an internet and other huge innovations. I think the real message should be 'double check your assumptions'.

>- Looking over the examples from the blog post, those aren't really from 'first principles'. They are assuming cars and an internet and other huge innovations. I think the real message should be 'double check your assumptions'. I think the point is that you should view cars as a physical object composed of engineered subsystems instead of as a cultural phenomenon.

This is precisely what it is. The problem is that people view historical success as a starting point (a "shoulder" of a giant) and work from there, rather than what need or problem the giant was solving, and it's requirements.

See: the example given of "Foursquare for hikers". Break down the needs of hikers from a social perspective, and start from there.

Similarly, break down the power needs of a car. Perhaps a battery isn't even the best way to proceed. Really, you just need power. Thinking a battery is the way to go is already making an assumption that other devices' success with battery power translates to "all problems requiring mobile power work best with batteries". That may not be the case.

Re: Elon Musk on First Principles

#68

Post by tomarr »

aridiculous wrote: post #31

Reasoning from first principles is ahistorical, and that is why it so rarely works in the real world. Political and social constructs inherited through time (like, say, the law) will butt heads against a "pure" new solution. You need the resources (and determination, will, etc) to overpower colossal systems we've arrived at through the progression of history. If you're going to hit homeruns like Musk, I think you mus…

I'm a great fan of the going from first principles - but I think it and your post ignores one big part of the reason for design by analogy.

A lot of error/bug fixing is evolutional and this knowledge is built up over time through the userbase and design team. You see this in software projects where there's always the temptation to start from scratch, but once in this process there's inherently a lot more bugs and quality control becomes an issue (even though the old clunky system feels low quality, functionally it can be expected to be reasonably error free).

Re: Elon Musk on First Principles

#69

Post by prawks »

stonemetal wrote: post #63
graeme wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The parent is referring to a different phenomenon. "The weight of history" might be a way of describing it. In many domains you can't just start over fresh. "Standing on the shoulders of giants" refers to the idea that we owe much of our knowledge to those who came before us. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standing_on_the_shoulders_of_gi...

Does that make the "The weight of history" equivalent to "The weight of giants"? That is to say we owe much of our knowledge to those who came before even if that knowledge is wrong.

It's an ideological framework (I guess you could call it that). If a giant's invention of X made Y and Z wildly popular, then we often assume that when designing A, if we want to replicate Y and Z's success, we should start with X.

That is, however, not the case. You need to work from the needs of A, and find solutions to those problems regardless of how the giants did things. The giants likely weren't wrong. It's just that your problem is different than theirs, and so their solutions, no matter how great they are, may not be appropriate.

Re: Elon Musk on First Principles

#70

Post by graeme »

stonemetal wrote: post #63
graeme wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The parent is referring to a different phenomenon. "The weight of history" might be a way of describing it. In many domains you can't just start over fresh. "Standing on the shoulders of giants" refers to the idea that we owe much of our knowledge to those who came before us. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standing_on_the_shoulders_of_gi...

Does that make the "The weight of history" equivalent to "The weight of giants"? That is to say we owe much of our knowledge to those who came before even if that knowledge is wrong.

Not quite. The shoulders of giants metaphor is positive. We stand on what they have built and can see farther. The giant is a good thing.

The weight of history (I just made it up) is used more negatively, though much that ties us down is indeed valuable. But when trying to do something new you will be constrained by the structures history has left us. This is both good and bad.

Given the English connotation of giants from the existing quote, I'd avoid using it in the sense you meant.

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