From Shane Parrish’s “The Great Mental Models”
First Principles Thinking
“First principles thinking is one of the best ways to reverse-engineer complicated situations and unleash creative possibility. Sometimes called reasoning from first principles, it’s a tool to help clarify complicated problems by separating the underlying ideas or facts from any assumptions based on them. What remain are the essentials. If you know the first principles of something, you can build the rest of your knowledge around them to produce something new.”
“Techniques for establishing first principles If we never learn to take something apart, test our assumptions about it, and reconstruct it, we end up bound by what other people tell us—trapped in the way things have always been done. When the environment changes, we just continue as if things were the same, making costly mistakes along the way. Some of us are naturally skeptical of what we’re told. Maybe it doesn’t match up to our experiences. Maybe it’s something that used to be true but isn’t true anymore. And maybe we just think very differently about something.”
“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 bitcoin. So is love. The list goes on. If we want to identify the principles in a situation to cut through the dogma and the shared belief, there are two techniques we can use: Socratic questioning and the Five Whys.”
“Socratic questioning can be used to establish first principles through stringent analysis. This is a disciplined questioning process, used to establish truths, reveal underlying assumptions, and separate knowledge from ignorance. The key distinction between Socratic questioning and ordinary discussions is that the former seeks to draw out first principles in a systematic manner.”
“Socratic questioning generally follows this process:
Clarifying your thinking and explaining the origins of your ideas. (Why do I think this? What exactly do I think?)
Challenging assumptions. (How do I know this is true? What if I thought the opposite?)
Looking for evidence. (How can I back this up? What are the sources?)
Considering alternative perspectives. (What might others think? How do I know I am correct?)
Examining consequences and implications. (What if I am wrong? What are the consequences if I am?)
Questioning the original questions. (Why did I think that? Was I correct?
What conclusions can I draw from the reasoning process?)
Socratic questioning stops you from relying on your gut and limits strong emotional responses. This process helps you build something that lasts.“
“The Five Whys is a method rooted in the behavior of children. Children instinctively think in first principles. Just like us, they want to understand what’s happening in the world. To do so, they intuitively break through the fog with a game some parents have come to dread, but which is exceptionally useful for identifying first principles: repeatedly asking “why?” The goal of the Five Whys is to land on a “what” or “how”. It is not about introspection, such as “Why do I feel like this?” Rather, it is about systematically delving further into a statement or concept so that you can separate reliable knowledge from assumption. If your “whys” result in a statement of falsifiable fact, you have hit a first principle. If they end up with a “because I said so” or ”it just is”, you know you have landed on an assumption that may be based on popular opinion, cultural myth, or dogma. These are not first principles.”
“Sometimes we don’t want to fine-tune what is already there. We are skeptical, or curious, and are not interested in accepting what already exists as our starting point. So when we start with the idea that the way things are might not be the way they have to be, we put ourselves in the right frame of mind to identify first principles. The real power of first principles thinking is moving away from random change and into choices that have a real possibility of success.”
“Reasoning from first principles allows us to step outside of history and conventional wisdom and see what is possible. When you really understand the principles at work, you can decide if the existing methods make sense. Often they don’t. Many people mistakenly believe that creativity is something that only some of us are born with, and either we have it or we don’t. Fortunately, there seems to be ample evidence that this isn’t true. We’re all born rather creative, but during our formative years, it can be beaten out of us by busy parents and teachers. As adults, we rely on convention and what we’re told because that’s easier than breaking things down into first principles and thinking for yourself. Thinking through first principles is a way of taking off the blinders. Most things suddenly seem more possible.”