Elon Musk sparked a debate when he mentioned that all inventions ever done by him were made possible by “reasoning from first principles”. Before we discuss that in much detail lets talk about the widely accepted & much used concept of “reasoning by analogy”. Analogies give us a framework for describing a new concept, idea by comparing it with an already established concept. We have become scary good at analogies. Give us anything and without having a clue about the fundamentals of it can still compare it with a somewhat related subject to establish similarities or contrasts.
So now arises a question as to what determines if an analogy succeeds in explaining a concept or phenomenon or if it fails.
The challenge that this approach presents is that you cannot establish the soundness of a novel concept(or the lack of it) by comparing/contrasting it with something that looks familiar on the surface but is fundamentally different. Then what purpose does this “reasoning by analogy” approach serve? Often the point of an logical argument is just to persuade people to take an idea seriously. Sometimes reasoning by analogy is the only available form of justification for a hypothesis.We could say that the more similarities between the two concepts, the stronger the analogy or vice-versa. Also, multiple analogies supporting the same line of thought and giving the same conclusion make the argument stronger.
Example: If a new mobile company “X” launches phones in India, we can compare it with Samsung or Micromax or Apple and can tell by analogy what the business model of “X” shall be to succeed in the Indian market. Also, using the same line of thought can predict why it may fail or succeed. You could for instance say that the price of a smartphone manufactured by “X” is Rs.15000 & hence it could only sell to the demographic that buys smartphones from companies like Samsung and Micromax with those particular prices and features. Hence, you may reason that company X needs to add some extra feature in comparison to these players at the same price.
This argument uses analogy to put the company “X” in the same framework as other mobile companies and reasons from there the similarities in the product(mobile phone), features of the products in the same price range, price of the products with similar price to establish patterns and hence give a framework to company “X” and it’s products.
Now, lets come to the argument for “reasoning using first principles” which asks you to boil things down to the most fundamental truths…and then reason up from there.
Example 1: Knowing how gravity works and then building on this principle to figure out how moon revolves around the earth.
Example 2: Lets say you want to build an amazing bike. You start with the fundamentals. You first need to know what are the components that a bike is made of , how much each component costs individually, if there is a way to use different/better/cheaper material!. Once you answer these questions then you need to ask what shall be the optimal weight of the bike, how shall it be designed for maximum comfort, user experience and ergonomics. Once you get to that, then you may need to decide on the business model for it. How shall I sell it? open a new store with my brand name, use retail outlets or online!!! Then you decide the most optimum of them all. How you shall do the advertising or marketing? Online, newspaper, magazines, social media or combination of all!! These are the decisions that are reached by building on the simple concept of how to build a great bike…This approach helps solve the problems associated with the current business model or the existing way of doing things.
If we used “analogy” instead of “first principle” for building a great bike then we would have compared it with other existing bikes and rather would have made some tweaks to enhance the existing model to bring some incremental improvements. We wouldn’t have analysed enough to fill the gaps that were missing in the existing model and hence would not have re-invented/redesigned the complete bike to be great starting from fundamentals.
Now the conundrum after reading this much is whether reasoning from first principle does hold an upper hand then reasoning from analogy? The answer is simple. It is neither is better then the other. If we go through the history books again we will find that many great inventors used analogy to establish patterns between two seemingly unrelated domains and this ability of mixing, matching created novel ideas unheard before. Reasoning through analogy served in a way as to establish meaningful connections between random topics and finding hidden patterns between them. The reasoning by analogy approach to thinking served the purpose of stumbling upon new ideas. All the great inventions ever came about from this approach to reasoning. Think of analogies as the creative form of mutations. It takes a creative type to look at the existing concepts and apply them to new fields to create a new vertical.
For reasoning from first principle requires you to know the concept beforehand. You take something existing and ask the fundamental questions to design that again in the smartest way possible filling the existing gaps and in the process re-inventing the wheel. This leads to breakthrough inventions in an existing field of study and its the best approach to attach an existing problem. In my opinion, this approach fails to give room to the serendipity required to generate new ideas. This is a grounded approach only using the most fundamental truths as the starting points whereas a new idea requires correlation and finding patterns between new domains.
Conclusion: So, the rule is simple, use “reason by analogy” to stumble upon new ideas but then use the “reason by first principle” approach to bring that idea to life. It’s also possible to give a framework to a novel problem using first approach and to reach the solution for that problem using the second approach. I have taken theoretical approach to reach this conclusion and I would love for you to use both “ analogy” and “first principle” approach to uncover the anomalies that might be present in this argument and let me uncover them through your feedbacks.
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