I'm a little suspicious of people who claim to think "everything" through from "first principles" (whatever those are).
Where do you get your first principles from?
If you get them from observing the world around you, how do you decide what parts to pay more or less attention to?
While you're deciding things from first principles (and coming up with those first principles), how do you make decisions in the mean time?
Note that in physics, computing things "from first principles" is often done to attempt to recreate a result that's already been reached by other approaches, to attempt to verify that you've got the right set of first principles.
Your first principles are the constituents of your worldview. Put in reverse: You worldview is the sum of your first principles.
Unfortunately, understanding your world view is a daunting task. This is why most people don't start with first principles. They have yet to know them.
Your reward system is hard coded. So you pay attention to the sensory data correlates that result in the highest preference satisfaction. This gets compounded until you've bootstrapped up to having a reasonable causal model of the things that affect you the most.
That particular debate goes back to Descartes vs. Bacon.
Descartes was a logician. Bacon was an empiricist, Descarte a rationalist reasoning from first principles, beginning with "cogito ergo sum": I think, therefore I am.
Many people don't have first principles to begin thinking from. While you're certainly right that the quality of one's first principles is at issue in judging their conclusion, the mere fact that so many people don't even bother to try to think presuppositionally seems to be more of the point of the video, IIRC.
You make assessments based on everything else you know (I think he mentions that at one point).
Of course this isn't unbiased, but at least you're thinking for yourself.
I don't think it's just about thinking from first principles, it's also about being able to change your first principles as you go along and understand that you need to reassess everything else that depends on it.
Well you have to decide on what your axioms are to start with. If you're developing a product you might decide your axioms are: "It must ship on time, its quality must be this high, it must sell x number of units", and then reason from there.
Comments
I'm a little suspicious of people who claim to think "everything" through from "first principles" (whatever those are).
Where do you get your first principles from?
If you get them from observing the world around you, how do you decide what parts to pay more or less attention to?
While you're deciding things from first principles (and coming up with those first principles), how do you make decisions in the mean time?
Note that in physics, computing things "from first principles" is often done to attempt to recreate a result that's already been reached by other approaches, to attempt to verify that you've got the right set of first principles.
Your first principles are the constituents of your worldview. Put in reverse: You worldview is the sum of your first principles.
Unfortunately, understanding your world view is a daunting task. This is why most people don't start with first principles. They have yet to know them.
Your reward system is hard coded. So you pay attention to the sensory data correlates that result in the highest preference satisfaction. This gets compounded until you've bootstrapped up to having a reasonable causal model of the things that affect you the most.
That particular debate goes back to Descartes vs. Bacon.
Descartes was a logician. Bacon was an empiricist, Descarte a rationalist reasoning from first principles, beginning with "cogito ergo sum": I think, therefore I am.
Many people don't have first principles to begin thinking from. While you're certainly right that the quality of one's first principles is at issue in judging their conclusion, the mere fact that so many people don't even bother to try to think presuppositionally seems to be more of the point of the video, IIRC.
You make assessments based on everything else you know (I think he mentions that at one point).
Of course this isn't unbiased, but at least you're thinking for yourself.
I don't think it's just about thinking from first principles, it's also about being able to change your first principles as you go along and understand that you need to reassess everything else that depends on it.
Well you have to decide on what your axioms are to start with. If you're developing a product you might decide your axioms are: "It must ship on time, its quality must be this high, it must sell x number of units", and then reason from there.