How to Understand anything using First principles thinking: Breakdown problems and solve them using their fundamental truths.
For every situation whether physical or metaphysical, there is always an underlying concept that gives a broad representation in the most high-level format that allows anyone to understand these concepts with little or no prior knowledge of them. This principle can be referred to as the first principle of that subject. It explains in simple terms, yet wholly encompasses the topic discussed.
Over time a lot of people who have made the greatest leap in technological, philosophical, medical, architectural, design, etc, advances in the history of man have all used first principles to achieve those feats.
A famed user of the first principle is my role model, Mr Elon Musk, the way he built his companies whilst relying on first principles translated in business, technology, and lifestyle, shares a deep insight into the reason why he is so successful.
How can we then use first principles in our daily life will be the next best question, funny enough by deconstructing first principle itself using the first principle will be the best way we can appreciate this power reasoning methodology (Haa haa haa, recursive statement right?).
A step by step approach will be using the following these few ones stated below:
- Who are those you know that have done something similar in the past:
This is the first and most valuable question to ask, the history of a problem often shed light on how it may be solved, the history of how previous success has been achieved aside giving insights into how it can be made to be better also often give insight into how not to do it. Examples will be the burg el Khalifa in Dubai, a truly magnificent building, however before the engineers decided to embark on the project to determine how best to design it, how best to fit the structural components, they decided to look at all the previous tall building the world has seen and decided to build something that will be better, at the same time building such safety features that the previous buildings didn’t have. They looked as far back as the BC’s to find inspiration. Deconstructing the problem to something as simple as the Japanese pagodas and working their way up to the twin towers. They built a phenomenal structure that will not only inform the future of mankind but serve as a relic to look back onto.
2. What are the underlying principles that make it work:
A bit technical approach but after digging deep historically this is what should come next, a good example to demonstrate this is the Falcon 1 rocket. The first rocket built by SpaceX, before building it, Mr Musk sought the easy means, buy a rocket, how hard can it be right? but it was too expensive, so he went the way that was supposed to be harder, build a rocket. How does one who has no prior experience building one seek to work on a rocket? but he had the drive to see himself build one, by redimensioning the problem he attacked it from its weakest points. The principle he understands quite well. F=Ma, and all of Newton laws, put together formed a broad overview of how a rocket works. Before he started attaching the other parts that comprise a gigantic combustion machine as a rocket, he thought of every deconstructed part in their simple and most-humble forms. Then he made them rise to fortitude after understanding their underlying principles. At long last we have a company that is building the starship, it will be able to do better than the SLS, currently being built by NASA a veteran in space exploration. Alas, SpaceX is a pretty young company, but the capacity they have developed over time is only due to sheer desire to understand first principles.
3. Separate complex concepts into small working pieces;
I believe I have touched on this in the previous point but a good example to touch on will also be Tesla’s battery pack. A simple system yet classic, conventionally, people would have thought, how do you make a battery-electric car look cool, well-read about teslas if you don’t know about them, cos I won’t be sharing much on what they are up to. But in a nutshell, the small 18650 type cells used, make up the big battery packs you see. They have deconstructed the system to understand why batteries electric cars may fail and approached it in the most feasible means possible.
4. Look at other things that work currently on the same principle as yours, but work differently from yours:
A very valid point, I will be citing AirsynQ’s Odyssey balloons Sattelites here, having built capacity over the years in building some systems here and there, such as satellites, drones and being grounded in how submarines work, because I love them. The idea to help odyssey fly wasn’t far-fetched as I could relate with it on several levels that would enable us to build a balloon that could operate and adapt to several situations whilst working on the principles of a drone, satellite, and a submarine altogether.
All in all, this is how the first principle works and how it can be implemented by anyone. Bear in mind that it doesn’t apply to technology only, it applies in every facet of life and you can use it anywhere you find difficult to comprehend a problem or challenge. Well, I have tried to write this piece in a simple yet high-level means to approach problem-solving, using first principles.
I will be doing a medium series on first principles guiding different complex systems, this will let the layman understand how some complex systems work in the simplest means possible. Note that simply doesn’t mean “easy”. I don’t know when the series will be released, but I think it will be soon, I will just dedicate my free time to writing them for your consumption.
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