Trunk · trunk
First principles
Boil a thing to what is actually true, then reason up. The trunk is not a vibe. It is the set of facts a leaf is allowed to hang on.
First-principles thinking is older than any rocket company. Aristotle called first principles the starting points from which a thing is known. The modern engineering habit is the same motion: do not copy the existing recipe; ask what the materials, the physics, and the constraints actually are, then build up.
Elon’s public version is blunt. You boil things down to the most fundamental truths you can confirm, and then you reason up from there. Cost of a battery pack, mass of a rocket, energy of a trip to Mars: each is a trunk question before it is a product question.
This tree uses that habit on knowledge itself. A claim about simulation, consciousness, myth, or number is a leaf. It needs somewhere to hang.
I think it’s also important to reason from first principles rather than by analogy. First principles is a kind of physics way of looking at the world. You boil things down to the most fundamental truths and then reason up from there.
Kevin Rose, Foundation, September 2012. First principles is a physics way of looking at the world. Boil things down to the most fundamental truths, then reason up. Battery packs were said to cost $600 per kilowatt-hour because they always had. The materials, on the London Metal Exchange, were about $80.
Hangs on First principles