First Principles Reasoning (FPR): The Way Elon Musk Thinks According To Elon Musk
Loved or hated, never ignored. The 51 years old tycoon has already built a huge impact in the world. Gladly in a recent interview, he gave the public a glance at what his mental process looks like.
Love and Hate
Is Elon a sociopath and a fraud like Elizabeth Holmes? Or is he the reincarnation of Albert Einstein with marketing skills? Only time will tell, but as often, the truth is likely to be somewhere in between.
One thing, however, is consensual: Elon is the hardest person to be ignored on earth nowadays.
I daily listen to an international politics podcast on Spotify and recently it became an internal joke of the hosts to curse the tycoon who steals the time of their program every day, normally reserved for global public leaders, like presidents and the UN.
Giving internet to Ukraine.
Canceling internet to Ukraine.
Suggesting a peace agreement on Twitter.
Buying Twitter.
Selling a perfume named “burned hair” to afford Twitter.
The list goes on.
Yet, before the polemicist, he was a bald programmer who made a small fortune still young. After that, the man built an empire of very disruptive companies (electric cars, space travel, neuro techs, satellite internet, underground infrastructure, etc).
Elon swears that he spends most of his time engineering, not on business-related subjects.
Being that true or not, the fact is that the man is building a legacy of a size that mankind has not seen in a very long time.
There is something unusually special in that awkward guy’s mind. Gladly for us, curious people have asked about it and he has answered.
Pragmatism is not enough, use the “FPR” instead
Pragmatism is choosing and acting solely to reach the results you want. You don’t care about looking or smelling good if that is not contributing considerably to reaching your goals.
Pragmatism is great, but let’s be honest, many people are pragmatic and don’t get 1% of Elon’s results. What is different then?
Well, Elon goes one step further. Yes, he knows the outcomes that he wants very clearly, like any good pragmatic. However, when it comes to making decisions and taking action, he doesn’t Google search best solutions and copies them as a good pragmatic guy would. He does the opposite.
Let’s say Elon wanted to become a successful Online Writer on Twitter under a moniker to troll people from the ground. According to him, he would wonder:
Okay, first of all, what actually is Twitter?
Twitter is a place where anyone can say anything in the form of short texts and get quick feedback from other people.
And why do people use that?
Well, people like to be informed, educated, and entertained fast and by people they relate to.
Why?
Because people are busy (or at least like to think they are) and understand information way better when it comes from someone they relate to and trust.
Why?
First, because in the democratic-capitalist logic where (most of) Twitter is inserted, being busy and being well informed is a virtue. So being part of a platform that offers information for busy people helps the individual to survive and thrive better than his competitors since he is signaling virtue (even if in reality it makes him lose lots of time).
Second, because humans tend to be sick and die in isolation, they are social creatures. So, being informed by people they relate to and trust (or very often hate) gives them a sense of community and identity which are basic human needs.
Why?
Twitter creates a feeling that the users are surviving or thriving in the democratic-capitalist game.
Twitter creates a feeling of community and identity for users, interacting with those they love and attacking those they hate.
Why?
Well, those are evolutionary human needs, can’t go deeper than that.
Ok, so all I need to do is serve those basic human needs that Twitter (not allegedly) promises users to solve as much as possible?
Yes. Be well informed/ educated/ entertained by someone they relate to because it helps people to survive, thrive, and feel in a tribe.
From that base, the process of creating a solution would start. Just after questioning all the presupposes that are thrown by “authorities” that are normally very interested in selling you something.
Once you reach the concepts that can’t be reduced any more, you are free to think in disruptive ways. According to Elon, this is the First Principles Reasoning (FPR), and the pragmatic way of thinking is “reasoning by analogy”.
According to him, that’s how he can create so much in so many different fields. Because while people are discussing “leaves” he is moving “roots”.
I think people’s thinking process is too bound by convention or analogy to prior experiences.
It’s rare that people try to think of something on a first principles basis. They’ll say, “We’ll do that because it’s always been done that way.” Or they’ll not do it because “Well, nobody’s ever done that, so it must not be good. But that’s just a ridiculous way to think.
You have to build up the reasoning from the ground up — “from the first principles” is the phrase that’s used in physics. You look at the fundamentals and construct your reasoning from that, and then you see if you have a conclusion that works or doesn’t work, and it may or may not be different from what people have done in the past.
An awkward example of FPR in action
So, in this example, to relate to people, he could have built a “Jesus Christ” Twitter account.
To have infinite content, he could rewrite a passage of the bible in easy-slang English and relate that to the news. That would inform, educate and entertain.
To reach an audience that is more interested in the Word, he could have invested a few hundred bucks for influential preachers to retweet his best tweets.
Once this new account was large enough he could start epic arguments between Jesus Christ and his personal account.
Not saying it is right or the best (or ethical) way, but it would probably work, Just because it’s in accordance with the first principles of Twitter.
It was probably quite uncomfortable to read so many “whys”. That’s why so few people go through this process and those who do and stick with a good plan, normally succeed.
The other option is to drown in endless information about people who “succeeded” in this game and claim to have the best formula for it, therefore you should copy them.
There are literally hundreds, if not thousands, of people that alleged the exact same and try to convince you to “reason by analogy”, copy them, and be happy forever.
The problem is, who to choose? You would drown in their “hook” content, end up buying from the one you related to the most, try to apply his solution (which probably is the variation of another one that he copied), and might or might not be successful.
The problem with reasoning by analogy is that you become a slave of your source of information. Since you don’t really get the fundamentals, you can’t adapt them when the situation changes or when you want greater results.
Bonus: The actual First Principles Reasoning of Elon Musk on Tesla
Somebody could say — and in fact people do — that battery packs are really expensive and that’s just the way they will always be because that’s the way they have been in the past. …
Well, no, that’s pretty dumb…
Because if you applied that reasoning to anything new, then you wouldn’t be able to ever get to that new thing…. you can’t say, …
“oh, nobody wants a car because horses are great, and we’re used to them and they can eat grass and there’s lots of grass all over the place and … there’s no gasoline that people can buy….”
… they would say, “historically, it (a battery pack) costs $600 per kilowatt-hour. And so it’s not going to be much better than that in the future. …
So the first principles would be, … what are the material constituents of the batteries? What is the spot market value of the material constituents? … It’s got cobalt, nickel, aluminum, carbon, and some polymers for separation, and a steel can.
So break that down on a material basis; if we bought that on a London Metal Exchange, what would each of these things cost? Oh, jeez, it’s … $80 per kilowatt-hour.
So, clearly, you just need to think of clever ways to take those materials and combine them into the shape of a battery cell, and you can have batteries that are much, much cheaper than anyone realizes.
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