First Principles Thinking

Copyright (c) 2021 Michael Herman (Alberta, Canada) – Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International Public License
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“Sometimes called “reasoning from first principles,” the idea is to break down complicated problems into basic elements and then reassemble them from the ground up. It’s one of the best ways to learn to think for yourself, unlock your creative potential, and move from linear to non-linear results.”

First Principles: The Building Blocks of True Knowledge (https://fs.blog/2018/04/first-principles/)

“I think it is most important to reason from first principles rather than by analogy. One of the ways we conduct our lives is we reason by analogy. We do this because something was like something else that was done or it was like what other people were doing. It’s mentally easier to reason by analogy rather than from first principles.”

First Principles Method Explained by Elon Musk (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NV3sBlRgzTI)

“You boil things down to the most fundamental truths
And you say “what are we sure is true” or “as sure as possible, what is true”
And then “reason up from there”
That takes a lot more mental energy.”

First Principles Method Explained by Elon Musk (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NV3sBlRgzTI)

Click on this video…