"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.
Elon Musk on First Principles
81–90 of 105 posts
Re: Elon Musk on First Principles
#82Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's because I'm a bad chess player, and most people are bad at reasoning from first principles. Elon Musk is one of may be five people in the world who can actually pull it off. Hero worship is mistaken. The reason you're bad at chess is because you believe you're bad at chess, so you don't practice. Similarly, most people don't believe they can be Musk, so they don't even try.
Well yes, most people don't make millions of dollars from a successful exit, so they literally don't have the resources to try to build a car company and a space company and run them simultaneously.
Re: Elon Musk on First Principles
#83Reasoning 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…
Re: Elon Musk on First Principles
#84Reasoning 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…
We do not need ideologies that call for full breaks from the past any more than we need ideologies that offer no improvements.
Taking over from the previous generation and moving things in a new direction is something that should be carefully considered and by getting as much feedback as possible. If revolutionaries actually listened to the people around them, we'd have a much better world out there...
I'm afraid that current trends have done a lot of damage to a bunch of existing cultural institutions. An easy example of this for readers of this forum would be the music industry. It has been a full-on technological assault which fragmented everything. The sales, the business and the artists themselves were absorbed by Apple, Facebook, and Google and a select few other social networks.
Art needs to be on the outside looking in, so it can properly reflect on society. And art should find it's way in to everyone's hearts, no matter their profession or specialties, so don't think I'm just talking about musicians here. And even within the scope of the music industry the "slacker middle class musician who should just get a programming job" is a really easy target and a huge straw-man.
You're gonna have to go out and define the word "art" on your own terms. Funny enough, you actually have to go out looking for it, it's not just gonna be whatever you read on Wiktionary.
I'll give you a little hint though. Wanton destruction of our cultural heritage is pretty much going in the exact opposite direction.
Re: Elon Musk on First Principles
#85Earlier quoted context omitted.
Reasoning from first principles is ahistorical, and that is why it so rarely works in the real world. No. Reasoning from first principles is hard , and that is why it so rarely works in the real world. It's not enough to be contrarian, you have to be contrarian and right, and that's really, really, really hard. Most people reason from first principles, come up with a bunch of bad ideas, and then blame it on inertia a…
It's because I'm a bad chess player, and most people are bad at reasoning from first principles. Elon Musk is one of may be five people in the world who can actually pull it off. Hero worship is mistaken. The reason you're bad at chess is because you believe you're bad at chess, so you don't practice. Similarly, most people don't believe they can be Musk, so they don't even try.
Re: Elon Musk on First Principles
#86I'm a big fan of reasoning from first principles, but in practice it tends to work out more like 'total honesty' does with your spouse. Which is to say, not always all that great. I tend to be a reasoned sort of guy, this doesn't mean I don't say stupid things, I do, but when called on those things I can tell you how I reasoned to them and you can help me see the error in my reasoning. When someone can't reason from…
When it comes to explaining the idea to others, using a first-principles line of reasoning is only one of your options.
Re: Elon Musk on First Principles
#87Earlier quoted context omitted.
Reasoning from first principles is ahistorical, and that is why it so rarely works in the real world. No. Reasoning from first principles is hard , and that is why it so rarely works in the real world. It's not enough to be contrarian, you have to be contrarian and right, and that's really, really, really hard. Most people reason from first principles, come up with a bunch of bad ideas, and then blame it on inertia a…
It's because I'm a bad chess player, and most people are bad at reasoning from first principles. Elon Musk is one of may be five people in the world who can actually pull it off. Hero worship is mistaken. The reason you're bad at chess is because you believe you're bad at chess, so you don't practice. Similarly, most people don't believe they can be Musk, so they don't even try.
Re: Elon Musk on First Principles
#88Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
There is a big danger in this line of thinking. Pretending like we don't need to inherit a lot from the previous generations, or from people who think different from us in our current time, is willful ignorance. Every wild-eyed utopian who has striven to rewrite all of the rules has tended to fail pretty badly and has also tended to bring a lot of other people down with'm as well. We do not need ideologies that call…
I'm having trouble understanding your point, possibly due to my own ignorance. It sounds like an indictment against any unpopular change, which would imply society should be a pure democracy. But that seems far from desirable.
Re: Elon Musk on First Principles
#89That's not a problem. That's a solution.
Re: Elon Musk on First Principles
#90The 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?
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gradient_descent
[2]: http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/mechanical-engineering/2-993j-int...