First Principles: The Building Blocks of True Knowledge

First Principles: The Building Blocks of True Knowledge

In every systematic inquiry (methodos) where there are first principles, or causes, or elements, knowledge and science result from acquiring knowledge of these First-principles thinking is one of the best ways to reverse-engineer complicated problems and unleash creative possibility. Sometimes called “reasoning from first principles,” the idea is to break down complicated problems into basic elements and then reassemble them from the ground up. It allows them to cut through the fog of shoddy reasoning and inadequate analogies to see opportunities that others miss.

“I don’t know what’s the matter with people: they don’t learn by understanding; they learn by some other way—by rote or something. Their knowledge is so fragile!” — Richard Feynman

The difference between reasoning by first principles and reasoning by analogy is like the difference between being a chef and being a cook. If the cook lost the recipe, he’d be screwed. The chef, on the other hand, understands the flavor profiles and combinations at such a fundamental level that he doesn’t even use a recipe. He has real knowledge as opposed to know-how.

If we never learn to take something apart, test the assumptions, and reconstruct it, we end up trapped in what other people tell us — trapped in the way things have always been done. When it comes down to it, everything that is not a law of nature is just a shared belief. Money is a shared belief. So is a border. So are bitcoins.

After three “whys,” though, you often find yourself on the other end of some version of “we can take this offline.” “Science is a way of thinking much more than it is a body of knowledge.” — Carl Sagan.

"Marc Andreessen – Why Andreessen Horowitz Is Investing in Rap Genius"

Rap Genius already is – the definitive online community of rap aficionados; one of the fastest-growing web sites in Y Combinator's history; a thriving ecosystem of ideas, artists, and fans. Unfortunately, our implementation at that time required a server to host all the annotations, and we didn't have the time to properly build that server, which would obviously have had to scale to enormous size. And so we dropped the entire feature.

Generalize out to many other categories of text... annotate the world... be the knowledge about the knowledge... create the Internet Talmud. Back in 1993, when Eric Bina and I were first building Mosaic, it seemed obvious to us that users would want to annotate all text on the web. We built a feature called "group annotations" right into the browser – and it worked great – all users could comment on any page, and discussions quickly ensued.

I