Elon Musk on First Principles | Hacker News Reader

Elon Musk on First Principles

blog.microlancer.com

189 pointsnpostolovski99 comments

Reasoning 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 must "reinvent the wheel" like he does. But he has resources to fight those battles, and you -- probably -- don't. When he didn't have those significant resources, like when he started Paypal from first principles, he had an entire cultural shift as his economic lever: he was only able to compete in the online banking and credit card industry because it was an Internet wild west.

I'm not sure that reasoning from first principles is the right first step for someone with no assets now that the internet has legal and corporate oversight swimming through it. But what do I know :P

I think "standing on the shoulders of giants" is the cliche you're looking for.

- Looking over the examples from the blog post, those aren't really from 'first principles'. They are assuming cars and an internet and other huge innovations. I think the real message should be 'double check your assumptions'.

>- Looking over the examples from the blog post, those aren't really from 'first principles'. They are assuming cars and an internet and other huge innovations. I think the real message should be 'double check your assumptions'.

I think the point is that you should view cars as a physical object composed of engineered subsystems instead of as a cultural phenomenon.

This is precisely what it is. The problem is that people view historical success as a starting point (a "shoulder" of a giant) and work from there, rather than what need or problem the giant was solving, and it's requirements.

See: the example given of "Foursquare for hikers". Break down the needs of hikers from a social perspective, and start from there.

Similarly, break down the power needs of a car. Perhaps a battery isn't even the best way to proceed. Really, you just need power. Thinking a battery is the way to go is already making an assumption that other devices' success with battery power translates to "all problems requiring mobile power work best with batteries". That may not be the case.

The parent is referring to a different phenomenon. "The weight of history" might be a way of describing it. In many domains you can't just start over fresh.

"Standing on the shoulders of giants" refers to the idea that we owe much of our knowledge to those who came before us.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standing_on_the_shoulders_of_gi...

Does that make the "The weight of history" equivalent to "The weight of giants"? That is to say we owe much of our knowledge to those who came before even if that knowledge is wrong.

It's an ideological framework (I guess you could call it that). If a giant's invention of X made Y and Z wildly popular, then we often assume that when designing A, if we want to replicate Y and Z's success, we should start with X.

That is, however, not the case. You need to work from the needs of A, and find solutions to those problems regardless of how the giants did things. The giants likely weren't wrong. It's just that your problem is different than theirs, and so their solutions, no matter how great they are, may not be appropriate.

Not quite. The shoulders of giants metaphor is positive. We stand on what they have built and can see farther. The giant is a good thing.

The weight of history (I just made it up) is used more negatively, though much that ties us down is indeed valuable. But when trying to do something new you will be constrained by the structures history has left us. This is both good and bad.

Given the English connotation of giants from the existing quote, I'd avoid using it in the sense you meant.

I don't agree: law, political, and social constructs are also amenable to arguments from first principles.

there is still an activation barrier (which is a chemistry first principle)

Some qualifiers:

Working from first principles does work if you're super, super smart. One could argue that Special Relativity was almost a redesign from scratch to the problem of the aether.

In any case, it's never really a pure first-principles construct. That's impossible. Your mind is contaminated anyway with all the knowledge from, you know, the shoulders of all the previous giants, and you can't really 100% suspend it at will no matter how hard you try.

What matters then is the effort to dive in towards the physical (for engineering) or mathematical (for computing) roots of the problem, and re-arrange the causal links from that depth up.

It's always a blended approach, but you may not always be aware that that's what you're doing.

> Working from first principles does work if you're super, super smart.

It depends on the problem you're solving! In a former job, I worked for a consultancy that would be called in to solve industrial problems. Our strategy was to use first principles to truly understand how to best affect the metric we were trying to change- and it worked beautifully, and we built our entire business around it. Yes, we had to hire smart engineers, but not necessarily geniuses- because the problems we were solving weren't "how do I lower the cost of car ownership in this country," they were more like "why has the efficiency of this naphtha recovery plant decreased by 25% over the last year and how can we fix it?"

(I'll note that the fact that we were being called in constitutes a type of selection bias- the "typical" methods of solving the problem weren't working.)

EDIT: formatting

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. More people should believe that our very way of life is malleable; after all, it is. Mentally buying into the life your generation happened to be born into isn't a good idea, because it implies we've figured everything out.

Very good point. Often there's very little cost to challenging conventional wisdom (think about it). If even 1/100 your attempts to challenge the CW produce results, it can be a winning strategy.

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 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.

Art is meaning, expressed. It's another matter that art isn't inherently profitable the way technology is, though.

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.

> We do not need ideologies that call for full breaks from the past any more than we need ideologies that offer no improvements.

I think that sums it up nicely.

As for art? It doesn't have to mean anything. Art, love, beauty, and truth are all different names and expressions of the same universal thing. Trying to define them is ultimately impossible because they live outside of human constructs like language, but we can FEEL them very easily. We know what love is but only the best artists can even come close to describing it for others.

You seem pretty hung up on binary answers and solutions for things. Well, I hate to break it to you buddy, but you're not gonna find any "one true solution". We need compromise and compassion to rule the day. We all need to understand that none of us silly little humans could possibly have the answers but that we can all FEEL the answers.

So no, I'm not arguing for pure democracy any more than I'm arguing for pure totalitarianism. I know, it's confusing and seemingly a paradox, but I think you're just pivoting off of the wrong thing. Look for the art, dude, look for the art.

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 and establishment. 99% of the time, the reality is that they're being contrarian and wrong, they just can't accept the latter part.

Consider chess. I know the first principles with 100% certainty, but that doesn't help me predict an outcome of a game. I can barely even analyze a single move to any serious degree, let alone two moves ahead. 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.

Learning to blame failures on my own ineptitude rather than on the establishment has gotten me an epsilon closer to Musk's awesomeness. I'm still lightyears away, though.

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.

I think everyone can benefit from learning how to reason in principle. Unfortunately it's habit forming and can causes tension with the uninitiated.

Bingo. To the millionth degree. Most people are just blind to the pure amount of effort and work that needs to be put into to getting the right answer. They'd rather just stack it up to being "bad/dumb".

Spot on. Some research to back you up: http://alumni.stanford.edu/get/page/magazine/article/?articl...

Do you know what the article means by: "why some become Muhammad Ali and others Mike Tyson"?

I think it's contrasting the success of Ali with the (inferred) lack thereof of Tyson. Maybe? But that doesn't make any sense to me; the first paragraph of Tyson's Wikipedia page will tell you why.

Unless it's talking about social success. In which case it seems out of context of the article.

I know very little about boxing, so I'm really not sure. My thought would be that though both were successful, perhaps Ali was an underdog who became successful where Tyson started successful but hit a plateau? I have no idea whether or not that maps to reality, that's just pattern matching. The other possibility is that the author of the article knows the same amount about boxing as I do, and chose an unfortunate analogy.

Also, reasoning from first principles requires you to be aware of all of the "principles" that need to be taken into account.

Say you decide to build a ship. You calculate the strength needed for the backbone when the ship is sitting in water, you calculate the size of the motor to get efficient movement, you calculate the placement and size of rudders to make your ship as manoeuvrable as possible. You calculate the exact shape of the hull at the waterline, taking into account the flow of water at the desired speed. Your ship is going to be the most efficient ship in the history of the world!

But there's a problem. You forgot that occasionally your ship is going to encounter massive waves. Massive enough that half the ship can find itself out of the water as it crests the wave. And then the backbone of the ship breaks, and your wonder of efficiency becomes an artificial reef. Or you forgot to take oxidizing effects into account, and one fine day as you negotiate the port of Newcastle, your rudder's pivots catastrophically fail due to corrosion, the rudder falls off the ship, and your oil tanker runs aground creating a massive environmental disaster.

Every time Elon Musk does something that hasn't been tried before, he runs the risk of running into these types of issues - things that we just hadn't thought to think of. Maybe that hold down system that they have for launching Falcons will one day assymetrically fail, dragging the rocket over horizontally before failing totally, leaving a very large missile to shoot along the ground. Or maybe we're going to discover that all of those redundant engines that a Falcon 9 uses create a failure mode that makes one engine failing create a cascade of failures elsewhere, due to pressure imbalances, or an engine explosively damaging those around it, or whatever. Those fires that we've seen in Teslas recently? Guess what, the designers forgot to think of something.

Which is not to knock Musk's achievements - indeed, I'm a big fan. First principles are important, they're the only known antidote to cargo-culting, but when you hit out in a new direction because you think that you've found a flaw in the reasoning of previous designers, be aware that here be dragons and your idea may catastrophically fail in novel ways...

> Also, reasoning from first principles requires you to be aware of all of the "principles" that need to be taken into account.

Yes exactly. That's where most people fall down, or what certainly seems to be the meme in software, where a person's first principles approach is actually just a naive approach.

I'm a great fan of the going from first principles - but I think it and your post ignores one big part of the reason for design by analogy.

A lot of error/bug fixing is evolutional and this knowledge is built up over time through the userbase and design team. You see this in software projects where there's always the temptation to start from scratch, but once in this process there's inherently a lot more bugs and quality control becomes an issue (even though the old clunky system feels low quality, functionally it can be expected to be reasonably error free).

You need assets to perform a basic cognitive function?

A few years ago i went to this talk where the founder of Kiva Systems (automated warehouse systems) was giving a talk. He was mentioning how he came up with the idea, and it was actually quite a structured approach. He altered the parameters to the theoretical maximum (what if the warehouse was an infinite size) what would the solution be? What he eventually came up with is the system they have today.

Structural thinking, the way Musk talks about is really useful. It is not intuitive to move the shelves instead of the warehouse picker, and thinking by analogy probably wouldn't have lead to that moment of inspiration.

that kiva system is very cool, here is a tedx video about it, and some words about the theoretical min-max parameters mentioned.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=szU2-1infqc

The 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 constraints could easily offset this advantage. If you can come up with a simple linear programming problem for the battery example - that's great, but most likely you won't due to the prescence of competitor, market and policy constraint.

I love this explanation. Do you happen to blog about optimization topics?

Seconded.

Ah, sorry no. I'm just interested in AI in general and constrained optimization has been the what I found to be the most general model for solving and giving insights into AI problems or any problems that require "intelligence".

If you're asking waht I think you're asking, then what you're then looking for is called 'numerical analysis'. Specifically, the grandparent was describing this [1]. Here is an OCW link for a good primer in to various introductory numerical analysis processes for Engineering [2].

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gradient_descent

[2]: http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/mechanical-engineering/2-993j-int...

Numerical Analysis is too broad for this topic. The precise category should be:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathematical_optimization

The hierarchy of topics in this area: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Mathematical_optimizat...

This is also why Google is paying millions of dollars for a quantum computer. Being able to solve complex optimization problems efficiently almost partially translates to access to higher intelligence.

http://googleresearch.blogspot.com/2013/05/launching-quantum...

I agree, but would like to add the aspect of uncertainty. When reasoning from analogy, you usually have good statistical knowledge about the properties of the problem. For example, the targetted product category may exist, and customer behavior is known, and therefore predicting what would happen in some nearby configuration is usually somewhat accurate. On the other hand, in the first principles case you need to have a very accurate theory, because you are "far away" from what exists currently. If the theory in questions concerns physics, as for Musk, then this can work well. On the other hand if it is about social sciences and you need to predict the behaviors of customer from some kind of first-principle model (e.g. rational agent models), then you are very likely to make mispredictions, since human behavior is complicated, and the theories are inaccurate and overly general.

With uncertainty you just change your objective function to an evaluation function of any possible scenario scaled with its probability. It doesn't change how optimization works. Again this formulation is only easy to solve in very limited context. For example in economics people have been working with the oversimplified supply-demand curves precisely because they are usually the dominating factors and in practice a sufficiently accurate model works just fine. This model only gives insights for why different ways of reasoning works, not actually providing the panacea.

The good thing about gradient descent is that you do NOT need to have a model, you just need to focus on a few parameters and figure out what is the direction for best improvement from a current relatively good point, where the other billions of parameters are already accounted for and assumed independent from the direction you are going.

It seems you are assuming there are direct observations. Musk is talking about generating hypothetical observations from a model (the cost of the battery is bounded from below by the cost of the battery materials). This sort of bounding does not always work outside physics, because the uncertainties are so ill behaving.

"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 passwords at all. E-mail authentication provides a better security layer than forcing users to pick yet another (insecure) password.

The algorithm for using the site becomes:

1. System creates an account with a unique account ID if the user has no site cookie.

2. User, upon being impressed, provides e-mail and name.

3. User can sign in later using their e-mail address.

4. User receives an e-mail with a login link to click.

Most users these days will already have their e-mail application open (be it Outlook, GMail, etc.), so leveraging all the work that has gone into making e-mail secure is a win.

This works if the ultimate goal is to sign them up for a free account. But what if the goal is to convert them to a paid account after a certain trial period? A user can just clear their cache or cookies and use it free indefinitely.

Persistent state (e.g. documents, settings) only available to signed-in users?

In freemium models, some features are free. People should be able to use the app without submitting contact details. I did not state that all features had to be free. Enough features should be available that users can quickly understand premium account benefits. Deciding what features to make free vs. premium can be a difficult business decision.

Then, unlock premium features for registered (paying) accounts. (Trial periods require superfluous tracking code that offers little business value, if any.)

See: http://www.forbes.com/sites/brettnelson/2013/07/23/the-freem...

So really, the answer is to use payment details as user information.

That seems like a great idea. /s

Where did I say to use payment details as user information?

For the life of me I can't find the link right now, but it was from Pat and Bingo Card Creator. He requires an account for troubleshooting and support purposes. The vast majority of support is from first time/free users and when they did not create an account, support was a headache at best and impossible at worst. Perhaps there were other solutions for him, but if you can get people to create an account and it makes your life easier, why not?

A/B testing could determine whether my hypothesis is correct, which is: more people will use and share a site if an account is not required to use its minimal functionality (think pastebin, jsfiddle, and Wikipedia) because account creation is a barrier to usage.

Thought-experiment. Imagine two nearly identical websites: one requires registration and the other does not. What site will people be more likely to use?

There were other solutions to the troubleshooting problem. For example, only registered accounts can contact for support. Note that there are three types of accounts: an unregistered account (free), a registered account (also free), and a premium account (paid).

Sure, but one really has to ask themselves whether it's worth that trouble.

I'm certainly not saying you are wrong, but looking at a product like Bingo Card Creator -- something that's really only worth keeping up if the work is minimal and the profit's fairly steady -- I doubt I'd go to the trouble.

And as someone who works for a public service institution, the "only registered accounts can contact support" is a nice sentiment, but rarely works in practice. What ends up happening is that people didn't read that particular piece of fine print and now their pissed that you won't help them and you'll never make that conversion to a paid account. Obviously Pat tried it your way and made the determination that it would be better for his product’s future to limit engagement.

You're working on the assumption that engagement and conversion of the maximum number of people is the sole goal. Perhaps there are other considerations that creator has.

It's nice to work from first principles, but once the product is on the ground, you really have to revisit your own goals for the product to make a determination what will work best.

> so leveraging all the work that has gone into making e-mail secure is a win.

What? Email isn't close to secure.

The point is that e-mail vendors (e.g., Google, Microsoft) have dedicated far more resources and effort to securing their e-mail software (e.g., GMail, Hotmail) than start-ups will, or can, dedicate for their own authentication component. (For example, how often are all GMail passwords been stolen?)

I am suggesting that the authentication process for e-mail is far more secure than what a start-up could produce to authenticate for their own site. I am not suggesting that e-mail is NSA-proof.

One can hardly count on users always having one of the big provider mail accounts and beyond the big providers, most email is still sent across the wire unencrypted. Email isn't generally script kiddy proof, let alone NSA proof.

While I like the idea of login via email link, it's only good if the login link expires very quickly.

Email is not an auth mechanism, if you want to rely on the big providers to do auth, they have systems specifically for that already.

Most websites use email as the password recovery mechanism. "Authenticate by email" is strictly better than "authenticate by password or email".

I'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 such a basis, and they are insisting on some plan or assertion based on their 'gut' I find it very hard to accept that as acceptable. When they won't even talk about how one might reason to the point, I find it unacceptable.

Some people are very invested in being "right" and letting them know they may not be right is taken as an attack on their person rather than their reasoning. One of the smartest guys I met at Google had this issue. You could do ok with the Socratic Method (asking questions that might lead them to understand where they were mistaken) but even that was dangerous if done in a group context (since the audience could figure out they were wrong before they could come up with a rationale). When someone works with me to explain their reasoning I really appreciate and respect them for that.

>> When someone can't reason from such a basis, and they are insisting on some plan or assertion based on their 'gut' I find it very hard to accept that as acceptable. When they won't even talk about how one might reason to the point, I find it unacceptable.

Not all people rely on linear and logical problem solving abilities. People who are creative tend towards "gut/intuition/instinct". Take for example Magnus Carlsen, who is the highest rated chess player of all time. He does not calculate logically which move to play next. Using his vast experience, he knows intuitively the best possible move to make next. Likewise there are chess grandmasters who are more methodical and calculating.

“The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift.”

― Albert Einstein

Occult drivel. Where on earth did you read that about Magnus Carlsen?

To say good chess players (not to say grandmasters, let alone world champions) don't calculate moves borders on insulting.

According to Kasparov, Carlsen has a knack for sensing the potential energy in each move, even if its ultimate effect is too far away for anyone — even a computer — to calculate. In the grand-master commentary room, where chess’s clerisy gather to analyze play, the experts did not even consider several of Carlsen’s moves during his game with Kramnik until they saw them and realized they were perfect. “It’s hard to explain,” Carlsen says. “Sometimes a move just feels right.”

Now, that concept I'm familiar with. In fact, I think that's a rather common feeling, not even exclusive to chess or pros.

Intuition (whatever that is) plays a great role, especially at the top level.

"Noobs use approximately 95% calculation and 5% intuition, whereas a grand master has a ratio closer to 40% calculation and 60% intuition."

I vaguely paraphrased this from a paperback chess guide of mine (hopefully more credible than the internet). According to my guide, grand masters can effortlessly memorize the positions of realistic matches. But for "nonsensical chess matches" where the positions were randomly generated, the masters were just as bad at recall as the noobs. From this data, my guide inferred that masters rely on recalling attack-patterns from their experience more than brute-force calculation. Similar to how a tourney-strength player has openings memorized by heart, I imagine that a master recognizes common middle-game patterns like the back of his hand.

I think we're talking about two different uses of the word "intuition".

One is basically to grok. To understand so deeply that you don't have to do the calculations anymore - you can just "feel" the truth, based off of the prior work you did.

The other use of intuition is isn't necessarily connected to prior calculation or heavy effort. Whether it's a rule-of-thumb, a gut feeling, a flash of insight or a lateral leap.

Reasoning from first principles isn't a good counterbalance to the first definition, and that's because the person doing the intuiting has already internalized those first principles.

But it is an effective counterbalance to the latter, for various reasons already discussed.

Obviously their actions are calculated, unless you pull in some notion of a non-materialist brain (some sort of strange "dualism" for which there is no evidence), everything they do is calculated in the strict sense. Saying that is missing the point of what is being said though. He is saying that Carlsen does not perform some of these calculations at the same "level of consciousness".

For instance, I know that if I have two apples, and give one away, I now have one apple. I also know that the prime factors of 87 are 3 and 29. One of those I "calculated" in my head, the other I know intuitively. Of course for both my brain performed calculations, but thinking of it like that is rather missing the point.

That part happens atop a huge logical base, though, a creative supplement that distinguishes the fine shades of world-class expertise among those with huge amounts of knowledge and analytic ability. Carlsen, like everyone who is competitive on a high level in chess, has spent a large amount of time accumulating vast stores of factual knowledge and analytical skills. He knows the opening books, he knows the end-game solutions, he knows basically all the heuristics that have been developed. On top of that, he makes some brilliant creative plays, but not in place of it. Someone who did not have a high-level grounding in rigorous chess theory as their basis would never make it anywhere in modern chess, no matter how intuitively brilliant.

I think you can say that, to various extents, for all forms of "intuition". The only reason I can intuitively bang through basic arithmetic is because I spent plenty of time as a child studying it, and doing it over and over again until the skill started to "become a part of me". Large amounts of practical experience or rigorous formal education both fill more or less the same role in creating a basis on which intuition about something can emerge.

Anyway, I don't think that we disagree on the actual point here, that claiming that somebody has "intuition" isn't somehow attributing their proficiency to the occult.

I didn't mean to imply that I don't appreciate intuition, I do. But I like to follow it up with reasoning. People with good 'instincts' often have excellent reasoning going on at the sub-conscious level, often in reflection they can tap into that bring it out for those of us who were wondering how they got there :-)

Please don't attribute quotes to well-known people without reliable references. This is a false Einstein quote paraphrased by Bob Samples in his book Metaphoric Mind: A Celebration of Creative Consciousness.

[1] http://www.quora.com/Albert-Einstein/Did-Einstein-ever-say-%...

Here is a proper quote with a reliable reference.

"All great achievements of science must start from intuitive knowledge. I believe in intuition and inspiration.... At times I feel certain I am right while not knowing the reason."

-- Albert Einstein

That certainty served him very well in the first 1/4 of his career, not so well in the final 3/4. :)

It's a tradeoff. Intuitive/gut thinking and heuristics are faster. But they'll be wrong when things are counterintuitive. And people that rely strongly on these models are often the hardest to convince of counterintuitive results.

The trick is to become facile at both methods.

> 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 they won't even talk about how one might reason to the point, I find it unacceptable.

I'm not sure that the outcome would be different in this case, whether you reasoned by analogy or by first principles. Neither accept a complete lack of reasoning, and both expect some basis for that reasoning.

"You could do ok with the Socratic Method (asking questions that might lead them to understand where they were mistaken) but even that was dangerous if done in a group context"

This is very true, and I've learned it the hard way.

I do not advise using the Socratic Method to dissect the reasoning of a "needs-to-be-right" personality in a group setting, particularly if that person happens to be your superior. It's been my experience that these personalities will feel under attack, and possibly even attribute personal/political motivations to you.

When removed from a group (i.e., to your point, an audience), the Socratic Method works a lot better. It allows the recipient of the questioning to save face. He or she will be much more likely to engage in a real dialogue.

The problem is the Socratic Method should only be used on someone who accepts that you're trying to teach them something. It's insulting when used in another context.

Strictly speaking, I think you're right, but many people use the phrase Socratic Method to mean any interaction in which you use questions to influence someone's thinking.

Feigning ignorance (or playing dumb) can be an extremely effective tactic in this area. Start with a simple question that is almost embarrassingly simple and then angle follow-ups towards the actual problem/inconsistency/concern/whatever. You often don't even need to ask follow-up questions; overly simple questions get people thinking about their core assumptions, which is often the root of the problem. Or their answer reveals flawed core assumptions, which is equally good.

I agree, but people quickly figure out you're trying to manipulate them and they still get angry. It's pretty rare that someone changes their mind based on your questioning their assumptions even if feigning ignorance.

> in practice it tends to work out more like 'total honesty' does with your spouse. Which is to say, not always all that great.

Spoken like a true wise man.

I think there's a difference between working with first principles to develop an idea, and reasoning with first principles to explain the developed idea to others.

When it comes to explaining the idea to others, using a first-principles line of reasoning is only one of your options.

It's funny that the example given is of Musk reasoning to how batteries can be much cheaper than they are. And yet Tesla buys their raw batteries from third party manufacturers just like almost all other EV manufacturers. So I'm a bit confused as to the value of this particular example. Furthermore, batteries still do not cost anywhere close to what Musk predicts. Perhaps that's because he completely ignores manufacturing costs in his analysis. The price of a sewing needle costs a lot more than the cost of the raw materials.

technical innovations that many thought impossible, like producing battery packs more cheaply than ever before.

Really? Many people thought that cheaper battery packs were actually impossible?

Maybe the rest of the article says something important, but when the second sentence is tripe like that I'm not going to stick around to find out.

What he said isn't even that big of a deal, the issue is more with you than with him. You actually just said that even if something important could be understood you will let your pettiness get in the way.

I think the most dangerous thing here is the branding of research as something new, that Musk has invented. I worked in academic and industrial research for a number of years, and any work that was worth it's salt typically went back to first principles to make its point.

The problem with this is that it's hard and time it's time consuming to do this. Most companies and people don't have the time to go back to first principles for every product they build, and it would not be financially viable to do so if they did. So we compartmentalise and we make assumptions about the outcome based on prior knowledge to assess the risk of the project.

Software development is illustrative of this point. Let's say you are developing a beautiful front end for your product. You use a toolkit, based upon an existing language, which eventually will get interpreted/compiled down through multiple existing systems and run on the processor of your computer.

If I wanted to go back to first principles and make the whole thing faster, do I optimise my code the language, the compiler, the browser, the os stack, the hardware stack, CPU assembly? No, as I'd no longer be a front end developer.

Research is hard, expensive, and by it's nature, high risk. If Musk can sit on his pile of money and do it, great for him, but for most, going back to first principles for everything is not a viable option.

Reasoning from first principles is a symbolic approach. Reasoning by analogy is the intuitive approach. Both have their place. Intuitive thinking works especially well on fuzzy problems with incomplete and/or conflicting data, where a statistical approach is likely best. Reasoning from first principles is indeed hard, but the reason it's so little used is because it often doesn't produce real world results.

Reminds of a quote (falsely?) attributed to Henry Ford.

“If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.”

Reasoning from analogy is the wrong way of saying what people have in mind when they provide examples to explain what it is. To me, it sound more like reasoning form what already works. In most examples I have seen, it is mostly about solving a problem using existing solutions/packages available and add your own flavor to it. That's why the "analogy" thinking because that's how the idea is presented, people pitch the idea using other's solutions. But what Elon Musk is different from others is that his thinking is stemming from scientific research more than you think it is. It is asking about the right question by digging deep into the core of the problem until you cannot dig any further. For example, in Elon Musk's example of battery, you first start with a goal: how to build an electric cars that is cost effective. You break the goals down into smaller problems, and you could recognize that battery is the biggest contributing factor in providing the solution to this goal, then you ask, why is the cost of battery so high yet it yield so little? Then you break the problem down into further smaller problems such as the cost for each component that comprised the battery, then you keep reasoning from there until you can find a ground where you can start reasoning back up. Personally I think the name "First principle" is also misleading since it is not mainly about principles, but more about asking the right questions.

I'm someone that has thought like this for most of my life, the biggest problem I have however is persuading others to do the same. Take for example a client, I'm helping them with improving their email marketing. I ask them do they really need a huge disclaimer at the end of each email? They dont budge.

Or say - I'm working on a mobile app and try to persuade my co-founder that we should consider doing things one way and then his response "but xyz company is doing it this way. so should we".

1. reasoning from first principles is a really cool, powerful and awfully difficult. Most importantly, it forces you to consider what the question actually is (see Douglas Adams).

2. the BOM cost is an interesting perspective, but is a terrible example of the above, because it doesn't go back to what the problem really is (energy), and also excludes every solution except batteries made of the same materials, and therefore likely based on the same principles.

3. the analogy to BOM for software is information (what do we know? what do we want?). While this is closer to true first principles than BOM, it assumes the problem statement, and thus precludes reconceptualization - changing the specification, changing the requirements, changing the context.

BTW describing a startup as the "x of y" is a way to communicate it succinctly, and not necessarily what it really is. It's ad copy.

Musk's thoughts are a great read -- thanks for sharing this.

Much innovation lies at the intersection of a mindset existing in possibilities, fuelled by creativity and ignoring what has, or hasn't been done before and really cut to the root of why people desire something or have a particular need.

Did you really have to come up with a name for it: "reasoning from first principles"? Does it not bother anyone else that this is just "thinking"? I mean, if you can deal with the cost of re-engineering the battery, then why not? Is this not common sense?

Reasoning by analogy is also "thinking". What's wrong with giving different names to different ways of approaching a problem?

Because it formalizes thought and encourages people to use templates rather than actually thinking about it themselves. If you're "solving problems" by always referring to your sheet of "problem solving approaches", then you're doing it wrong. You might still be successful in solving a problem, but you've effectively turned yourself into a robot.

Anyone operating in a template-driven manner is not reasoning by first principles. I'm not sure what legs your argument has, we might as well say that speaking an existing language like English, French, or German makes us robots by forcing us to communicate within a well-defined and rigorous communication structure.

The fallacy of an individual with regards to reasoning is not a function of the fact that methods of reasoning are identified - they are failures of the individual to effectively apply their own creativity. Don't blame the linguistic constructs.

"Anyone operating in a template-driven manner is not reasoning by first principles."

I'm saying that when you want to solve a problem, you don't use a checklist of which "reasoning from first principles" is an item. "reasoning from first principles" would be the template. It's an approach that someone spoonfed you. There is no contradiction here because we're speaking about the type of approach, not the particular sequence of steps you use to arrive at the solution. Of course you can be creative with these steps once you know the type of approach you're taking.

"I'm not sure what legs your argument has, we might as well say that speaking an existing language like English, French, or German makes us robots by forcing us to communicate within a well-defined and rigorous communication structure."

Natural language is well-defined and rigorous? That's not true.

"The fallacy of an individual with regards to reasoning is not a function of the fact that methods of reasoning are identified"

I don't care that it's labeled, per se, as long as people are discouraged to act like I mentioned. If the act of identifying and labeling thought patterns promotes laziness, then I am justified in being against it. But anyway, that's an empirical claim and you haven't provided any real reason for why you think it's false.

And Test driven development is really just "Development"... why did they need to make a name for that?

I think what Musk is trying to do here is provide structure, and intention to the WAY he thinks.

It's a more-specific form, used to distinguish a particular method.

There's a great example of this kind of thinking on the homepage right now: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6736001. The last sentence in the article:

“But first, this problem needed someone like Jorge,” he said. “An obstetrician would have tried to improve the forceps or the vacuum extractor, but obstructed labor needed a mechanic. And 10 years ago, this would not have been possible. Without YouTube, he never would have seen the video.”

"Problem: Creating a website that allows customers to buy a new car at a low price and have it home delivered, sparing them the pain of a stressful dealership visit and price negotiation."

That's not a problem. That's a solution.

A similar theme, but on game design, can be found here:

http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1013804/MUD-Messrs-Bartle-and-T...

I have this habit of highlighting text as I read, and on this website, I find that the text is gray and the highlight is a very similar shade of gray.

Does this bother anyone else?

Hear, hear! Yes, I do that too and noticed the same when reading from microlancer.com.

I think it drives my coworkers crazy when they're looking over my shoulder reading from the same screen.

Yes! I came here to opine that in an ideal world somebody would slap the site designer for his lousy color choice.

All the more ironic that this is a developer trying to tell us about innovative and creative thinking.

This reminds me of the S/N Meyers-Briggs definitions (Sensing vs. Intuition)[0].

Sensing is about analogy; we go with what exists, what I can upvote/pin/like/snap, and I improve upon it. I iterate until I've created something that we know already exists but in an improved way. We take what exists

Intuition is about what this article calls "first principals"; we notice the trends, the underlying reasons why we upvote/pin/like/snap and try to create something that satisfies that need. Or we find a new need and try to fill it. Doesn't matter.

So Elon Musk is saying something entirely[1] un-new[2] - that N types work better in entrepreneuring than S types. Common theory, no clue if it holds water.

[0] - http://www.myersbriggs.org/my-mbti-personality-type/mbti-bas...

[1] - http://www.keirsey.com/4temps/inventor.asp

[2] - http://www.businessinsider.com/myer-briggs-personality-style...

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