

Reasoning From First Principles in Disruptive Entrepreneurship - jww1117
http://takingpitches.com/2012/09/22/elon-musk-the-role-of-analogy-and-reasoning-from-first-principles-in-disruptive-entrepreneurship/

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narrator
If you don't reason from first principles you can only come up with ideas that
are slight derivations of existing ideas. If you reason from first principles
you can come up with completely new ideas that have never been tried before.
If you continue this process you don't have to worry about people stealing
your ideas because you'll come up with so much stuff that you'll never run out
of new things to try.

The one problem with reasoning from first principles is it becomes hard for
anyone to judge your ideas and give you feedback before you try them. You have
to be able to check yourself because most people, when introduced to a novel
idea will think "Sounds like a good theory" and shrug their shoulders because
they can't compare it to anything similar in their personal knowledge base.

~~~
jww1117
I completely agree. I come up with a lot of ideas and mention them to
family/friends and 9 times out of ten the first thing they say about it is a
huge obstacle or that it isn't feasible. I've always thought it was
interesting that a majority of people, when presented a new idea, tend to go
with the "Sounds like a good theory" reaction than imagining that it can be
possible. That is why I admire Elon, in the face of all the critics that say
it isn't possible he makes it possible.

~~~
RodericDay
I think it's interesting that when talking about apps, people take this
perspective. When talking about economics and social justice, the same people
are quite reactionary.

In my experience, of course.

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kirk21
Have created an overview of all his interviews here:
[http://everyelonmuskvideo.tumblr.com](http://everyelonmuskvideo.tumblr.com)

This is also cool: [http://shitelonsays.com](http://shitelonsays.com)

~~~
ramidarigaz
Your second link is pretty amusing. His sense of humor never really seems to
come across on video, but I was actually laughing at a few of those.

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lhnz
"Reasoning from first principles" is just a bullshit way of saying, analogise
using fundamentals and don't hand-wave or fit to a narrative when you have
empirical data.

The example with material constituents of a battery is still reasoning with
analogy - you had to draw analogies with other problems with similar solution
structures: the important thing here was knowing the fundamental principles
about satisfying economic problems, and the scientific domain knowledge
relating to the creation of a high-quality battery.

~~~
crusso
Exactly. Reasoning from first principles vs analogizing is a false dichotomy.
As you point out, the two methods aren't even mutually exclusive.

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coldcode
I like Elon's way of thinking, but it's not always easy to determine what the
first principles are. In physics you have a couple of centuries to figure it
out. In software or apps or whatever it's much less clear.

~~~
jww1117
I agree, it's incredibly less clear. I re-watched his TED interview and
started researching different ways of determining first principles. Thought
this was an interesting perspective. I found this post particularly
interesting in relating first principles to software development:
[http://www.mytechfetish.com/2013/04/first-principle-
reasonin...](http://www.mytechfetish.com/2013/04/first-principle-
reasoning.html). I can relate with how this article states that there is more
reasoning in analogy than examining processes through looking at the first
principles. I just started a new job at a tech center and I finding a lot of
"that's just how it's always been done" going on.

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ecuzzillo
I liked the interview, but I didn't like the article interpreting it. In
particular, they bash the X of Y pattern, but Tesla is the Apple of cars. No X
of Y moniker is ever perfectly accurate, but that one is close enough to give
somebody who's never heard of Tesla a general idea of its goal, which is the
whole point of saying we are the X of Y. If people have already heard of you,
you can just say your name; it doesn't and shouldn't occur to you to describe
yourself as the X of Y.

It's unfortunate that an interview that should be encouraging to uncertain
hackers was twisted into another way to bash new uncertain things.

~~~
beat
Indeed. Just because you're reasoning from first principles doesn't mean the
people trying to understand what you're doing need to reason from first
principles.

One of my first principles for customer acquisition is that potential
customers are looking for any excuse whatsoever to ignore you. Making
understanding difficult for them is a very straightforward way to turn them
off.

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iambateman
First principles totally get worked out in software.

37Signals did quantitative research to find out that for them, a girl smiling
on their homepage for Basecamp totally works. Then 5,000 startups followed
suit and the whole world is full of smiling girls on home pages.

But the principles behind that decision drive conversion for basecamp, not the
girl.

It's one of the things that is most concerning to me about the Lean Startup.
The idea that you can follow a series of steps to manufacture revenue without
really understanding what those steps mean is hypnotizing.

~~~
joseph_cooney
re: The lean start-up - does it matter? I'm sure you can 'go deep'
understanding the cognitive science behind why the smiling girl works, and
that might give you some insights, but without perfect knowledge of the whole
world you could never perfectly understand why, and instead of spending that
time with deeply understanding more about the why you could run 50 other
experiments to find other things that worked or didn't work.

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6ren
Analogous to the materials cost of batteries is the information content in
software - what information do we have, what information do we want, what is
the theoretically minimal possible transform?

But, like materials->batteries, finding clever ways to actually _do_ that
requires a lot of mental energy.

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ronilan
> _Then the question is do you have the courage to move forward and tackle it
> to change it and create customer value._

Thinking that what is missing in order to tackle a big problem is courage, is
like thinking rockets can levitate if they just put their minds to it. In
fact, resources are what is needed to tackle a big problem.

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OvidNaso
It's at least a little funny that the explanation for reasoning from first
principles is an analogy to physics.

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mark_h
Rich Hickey is another one worth reading (/listening to) for more examples of
breaking things down to core principles, and potentially coming up with a new
approach based off them. For example datomic, which breaks a database into the
core components of storage, query, and transactions.

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bfe
Elon has also spoken of thinking from first principles of physics for getting
humans into space, particularly in developing the Grasshopper reusable launch
vehicle.

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maho
Oh no, the units! I had to go watch the interview to make sure Musk said it
right: $600 per KWh, not the silly $600 KW per hour that is written in the
article...

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marcosdumay
I don't even read units at the press anymore. I developed some kind of
blindness that, when I see a unit all the information I gather is a label from
the set {SI, meaningless}.

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na85
"Disruptive $topic"

 _eyeball roll_

