
How Elon Musk Thinks: Reasoning from First Principles. - jasonjackson
http://www.oninnovation.com/videos/detail.aspx?video=1251
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icarus_drowning
I think Musk is right to point out that many people don't reason from first
principles-- basically, that they consciously decide not to think about
something, but to allow other's thinking to guide their thoughts. ("It has
always been done this way")

I recently began teaching in a school where students are required to write
extensively in every class, including "extras" like PE, Music, or Art. I've
found that, generally, students who have been subjected to that system for a
number of years are far better at reasoning (and expressing that reasoning,
naturally) than those who are new to the school. (It is astonishing how
quickly new students, who inevitably struggle with complex reasoning at the
beginning of the school year have made leaps and bounds in this area, and are
far more skilled at verbal reasoning by the end of the school year).

All of which is to say: I think that this style of thinking is greatly
buttressed by enhanced linguistic ability, as language is critical to higher-
level thinking.

Very interesting video, and the interactive transcript was extremely cool.

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jleader
I'm a little suspicious of people who claim to think "everything" through from
"first principles" (whatever those are).

Where do you get your first principles from?

If you get them from observing the world around you, how do you decide what
parts to pay more or less attention to?

While you're deciding things from first principles (and coming up with those
first principles), how do you make decisions in the mean time?

Note that in physics, computing things "from first principles" is often done
to attempt to recreate a result that's already been reached by other
approaches, to attempt to verify that you've got the right set of first
principles.

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tedkimble
Your first principles are the constituents of your worldview. Put in reverse:
You worldview is the sum of your first principles.

Unfortunately, understanding your world view is a daunting task. This is why
most people don't start with first principles. They have yet to know them.

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javert
The transcript on the right is the same as the video, and easier to read.

I think this is great overall. However, I think he's wrong at the very end.
People aren't just hardware and software; they're hardware, software, and the
thinking they have done (call it "free will" if you want). That accounts for a
lot of the differences in people.

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bfe
Or it's software that keeps writing more software, thereby modifying itself
and sometimes its hardware.

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javert
Yes, I think that's probably more accurate. Anyway, the point is that the end
of the interview is a fallacious denial of that which is commonly called free
will.

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shalmanese
I think it's ironic that Elon Musk starts off by railing against reasoning by
analogy and then ends up with analogizing human behavior using the
technological metaphor of his age.

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shalmanese
More specifically, it's our tendency to rely on the current technological
metaphor to analogize the brain that contributes to misunderstanding and false
equivalency: <http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~jgd1000/metaphors.pdf>

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jamesrcole
I think this ability is really valuable, but there's so many barriers to
people getting experience with it.

To do it, you have to venture into the unknown without a map. You have to make
the map yourself, and you have to figure out how to do that. You don't know
how long that will take, but it is likely to take quite a while. While you're
working at it you will not have a very clear understanding of exactly what
your position is, and you won't be able to articulate it clearly to others.
And of course you will have to go against what "everybody knows" (but really
just think they know).

There's so many barriers to this that come from our social and institutional
norms, where it's generally expected that you can explain what you're doing,
that you can say why it is better, that you can estimate how long it will
take, etc, and where it's frowned upon if you can't do these things. And where
it's generally frowned upon to "have the arrogance" to "go against" what
people of high-standing came up with or take to be true.

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jhuckestein
In the end he says that after having had 5 kids he believes that nature has a
much stronger impact on people's personalities than nurture. That surprised
me, I wish he could have elaborated on it.

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klenwell
Steven Pinker's The Blank Slate is a spirited and informed articulation of
this view.

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MikeCapone
That book is excellent. In the same vein, you can read The Moral Animal by
Robert Wright, or if you want to dig deeper, check out the studies cited in
those books.

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rhnoble
I didn't think much of the video, but I liked the "Interactive Transcript"
widget on the right side of the video.

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Jach
I'm all down for first-principles reasoning, but I don't like that term for
some reason. For some reason it makes me think it's unduly favoring deduction
and making assumptions whenever possible, even though it's not. If you start
from good first principles, like the axioms of probability theory, all of a
sudden you get inductive inference and deductive as a special case. Yay!
Nevertheless I'd still more enjoy shouting "Baaaaaaaayes!" from the rooftops
than "First Principles!"

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ThomPete
Say basically ayn rands "existence exist"

That's not first principles just to be clear.

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stmartin
Oh the arrogance....the pride... my head hurts.

"First principles"... Must be that our interpretation of physics is THE first
principles.

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lutorm
From the context in which he's saying it, I don't think he means it in the
sense you're thinking. I thought his reference to physics was an analogy, not
an exact statement. I took it to mean more "don't assume that what you hear is
true, if what you conclude based on the things you know is different, you
should go with that."

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pshapiro
If it's really a first principle then there should be only one of them. This
is very important if you want to understand the world completely.

