prenkuchan

Keith

Naval

rakshith

T Timothy Tran

Misba Reyaz

Thamir

Siphiwe

Nicolas

Jon Gordon

 My motive behind this room is simple. For starters I understand what first

 principles thinking is in theory but in practice and maybe I do apply it

 somewhere unknowingly if I do but in practice if I want to consciously put

 myself in a state where I'm taking a bottoms-up approach instead of a top

 down I think that I don't know how to consciously get into that state and so

 that's cause of confusion for me that's where I really become confused I can't

 consciously put myself into a state where I'm taking the bottoms-up

 approach am I really doing first principles thinking so I want to get all

 pointers from people here and hopefully by conversing and asking questions to

 and through and discussing it I'll somehow get a 

 firmer grasp on what really first principles thinking is

 principles thinking than I was a year ago where I used

 to sort of start with the conclusion and 

 then figure out how I arrived at that conclusion

 or maybe not even that just accept the conclusion as it is.

 conclusion is presented to me I work my way from asking

 questions like okay now this is the set of 

 questions I need to ask and then work my way

 up from there and then maybe there are not just one solution there are many solutions

 to this problem a novel solution a better solution.

 So I kind of want to evolve my thinking in that manner.

 What I understand about first principles thinking till now is simple.

 with a problem. The first thing I do is I

 discard the conclusion that I already know about that problem and I start by asking questions

 The problem with me is I get lost in those 

 questions and somehow instead of moving up vertically

 like arriving to something new, I somehow move horizontally. I get busy in those

 Who? What? Why? How? And I want to move ahead of that 

 then it feels like I'm not arriving at any conclusion at all.

 You know, I'm not too familiar with first principles thinking. I'm pretty sure,

 well, I'm assuming that it has to deal with finding the root cause of things,

 but I will probably say that there's always one effect and there are various

 causes, so that might be a little difficult thing to find the root

 cause of something. But expanding on the bottoms-up approach, I've been reading

 the book Beginner's Mind. That's a great book. It gives you so many insights as

 to how to approach something from bottoms-up.

 Now since I'm not able to consciously recognize at least if I put myself in that

 What I do for now is I haphazardly ask questions. I question it. There is no

 Order to it. I don't know if there is supposed to be an order, but

 Regardless of whether I'm moving horizontally or vertically I start by asking questions

 At that point I'm satisfied that at least I've 

 begun to question the conclusions that I already know

 a lot of books to really develop a sense

 of first principles thinking. I read Algorithms to Live By by Brian Christian

 and Tom Griffiths, Mental Models by Shane Parrish, all the volumes. Like I said,

 I have come to understand it in theory but it's somehow it's just a full stop

 after that. I can't seem to move ahead of you know the first line of questioning

 like the what, who, the important details. I start with those but now I want to

 make sense of this, connect it and move ahead. But 

 seem to get lost in that basic line of questioning.

 My approach to first principle thinking is to first master the basics by basics

 I mean evolution, physics, logic and computation. If your basics are strong

 you can play around with these tools to arrive at your own conclusions. Let's

 say you are presented with a problem in psychology or biology or human nature. If

 your knowledge about evolution is strong you can easily arrive at your own conclusions.

 I would say it's more akin to the latter, the bottoms-up approach, but the 

 very bottom, the very first layer is the fundamental axiom where you start 

 with what you know is absolutely correct, for example, like the laws of physics.

 Where was this concept when I was a little child? Literally I mean I mean we

 are not taught using this kind of methodology that what is first principle

 thinking and how you could use it you could build it and you could just create

 your new neural connections with this but I first got to know about the

 concept once I was watching Elon Musk's video the interview and he really broke

 down the concept that what it is he says that first principle thinking boils down

 to that fundamental which is which the people are really are pretty sure about

 that for example the laws in physics then you just build from that fundamental

 and all the process I had but I think first principle thinking must be

 inculcated in early childhood if you want those real intellectual minds when

 Musk himself he he did not get any kind of

 degree from university that that defines him in that kind of sense he

 built his he built his own knowledge by reading books and developing this this

 kind of thinking the first principle thinking and I think first principle

 thinking must be really taught in early 

 childhood by the way I want to learn more about this

 Yeah, they don't teach this in schools or in any other educational institutions.

 Maybe if you're lucky you find a mentor who values first principles thinking or

 any other such methodologies which they want to imbibe in you as a teacher.

 That's that's a rarity. I wish they did too. I wish they provided some sort of

 understanding to us or a base on which we could understand and understand and

 see the structure basically. If not live it, we know 

 the starting point. But unfortunately that's not the case.

 Actually I think society as a whole has invested too much on passing down or

 sort of hammering into kids what norms they need to follow and so up until they

 turn into an adult of course even after that but until that time unless they can

 exercise some free will so to speak this entire process is one that fills their

 clean slate with rules and regulations and so the person is caught in that and

 even those were educating us have been caught in that so for me even thinking

 about understanding what first principles thinking is required me to

 understand this web of rules and norms and sort of understand how to see them

 from above and not just you know get lost in them

 they cannot teach us what they don't know.

 I won't lie, I come from a humanities background, up until college I was doing

 Bachelor of Psychology, I applied psychology and even in school, in high

 school I had no subjects related to science or math, so it's sort of a

 it's like my mind is, it's sort of jammed

 reading a lot for as long as I know, but 

 somehow with books of science and math, I

 age, at least five times to make sense of

 that para and to really understand it, because for me it's important I

 visualize that information, otherwise I don't understand what's written, so it's

 a bit of a speed breaker, I'm trying to correct that.

 on that note it's just sort of it blows 

 my mind that it's optional to study math

 and science because I see it as a necessity to navigate this world that

 you have a scientific temper and when you take those subjects out and say

 something okay you're just reading history and philosophy and psychology

 and okay you're done with I mean that just doesn't make sense you're taking

 away from that child their ability to start thinking begin thinking critically

 Sorry, to understand that critical thinking is far more important and sort

 of a necessity to live a fulfilled life as opposed to simply accepting

 information as it comes to you. I think by taking away those subjects we're

 depriving children of something extremely important. They won't even know

 what they're missing but they will feel it missing, like I am.

 So I do agree with you that there is a difference 

 between the theoretical aspect of first principles

 thinking and the practical aspect of it, 

 but I think one thing to do is to put yourself

 in different stressful experiments and contexts. I can't actually 

 think of a better answer because I think the reason why the gap exists

 between theoretical and the practical is because of some kind of psychology, because I think

 at least from my experience, I can kind of 

 think more clearly and deeply when I'm alone.

 So I can collect all the theoretical data 

 and kind of implement it, but once I'm put

 in a social context everything vanishes and I have to think on my feet.

 So just putting yourself in social contexts and stressful situations can actually lead that practical leap.

 I give this answer assuming you have the 

 building blocks for the first principle since you say

 that you actually read a lot of books on it.

 So this answer cannot really work with someone who's not familiar with the principles that

 one should actually implement. But it seems to me like you 

 have a good grasp since you mentioned you read a lot of books.

 So that's the main assumption I guess on my previous tip I would say.

 And I also think it's not really necessary to delve into the theoretical aspect of

 first principles thinking or read any books about it like I've personally never read

 any books about first principles thinking per 

 but I do think one practical and more effective

 way to approach it is to just observe the 

 thought process of different thinking agents around you

 or your favorite thinkers and just try to 

 implement the best out of it. It seems to me like we have

 an intuitive aspect of detecting a good thought 

 process so as soon as you detect such a thing you

 can just see how that person thinks and try 

 to implement it yourself to a certain extent.

 Although it's not always that possible but 

 I do think it takes one two steps ahead when

 it comes to the practical implementation of first principles thinking.

 And I think the last thing I said about 

 the thought process of different thinking agents

 might seem like it's almost self-evident and trivial to actually mention

 but I think a lot of people observe the thoughts of other people

 but they don't really take the effort to observe the thought process of other people

 and just deeply understand the thought process

 so that's why I felt like it's important to 

 actually put a reminder on that specific point

 First principles thinking begs the question, what are these first principles?

 The first principles will come from your own direct experience, which is just what you have

 encountered in the real world. The second set 

 principles on top of that will come from things

 that you know to be foundationally true on top 

 of your direct experience, and that will be logic

 and reason and mathematics. Next after that 

 will come what you derive from logic and reason and

 mathematics. What are our best explanatory theories? And that would be epistemology, evolution, quantum

 physics, and computation. And after that you 

 would ask, well what else do I know to be true? So you

 would look into economics and you would probably realize that microeconomics is more verified by

 your direct experience than macroeconomics, which seems very hand wavy. You will realize the natural

 sciences are more verified or at least verifiable by direct experience and experimentation as opposed

 principles reasoning means that you have a foundation of

 truth that is built up from direct experience, through logic and reason, through foundational

 theories, and then slowly you start losing 

 plot as you expand it further and further out.

 And at every point where you make a step, 

 do so through something that you've reasoned

 through yourself, and you build your skyscraper of knowledge upon a steel frame of understanding.

 Speaking of first principles thinking, Naval has a podcast episode about the book, The 

 Beginning of Affinity, the sequel of The Fabric of Reality, and they both propose that the 

 first principles of your mental models should be quantum physics, the theory of evolution,

 epistemology, which is the theory of knowledge, and the theory of computation. If you have those four 

 as your first principles, then there's pretty much nothing in the universe that you cannot understand.

 Thank you so much for taking out the time to 

 me with this. I have a question. When you say the

 truths I know about the world because of my experience, is it possible that you're somehow

 unable to consolidate an understanding based on those truths? Can they be sometimes incoherent?

 If so, how do I go about making sense of them 

 consolidating them into one solid understanding,

 the base on which I can start things on? And 

 number two, a problem that I face, an obstacle,

 is that I think in a different language and I 