09/12/2026
Elon Musk on first principles.
“A good framework for thinking is physics… first principles reasoning.”
“Boil things down to their fundamental truths and reason up from there, as opposed to reasoning by analogy.”
Most of life runs on analogy — copy what others do with slight variations, because that’s how you get through the day. New work can’t. If the answer isn’t already on the shelf, you have to drop to physics: what’s actually true, then build up.
• Analogy = copy + tweak
• First principles = fundamental truths, then reason up
• Something new → physics approach
“But when you want to do something new, you have to apply the physics approach.”
