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We live in a world where most things already have "best practices." When you want to do something, the most natural reaction is to look at how others are doing it and then copy them. This way of thinking is called Reasoning by Analogy.

However, true disruptive innovation rarely comes from analogy; it often stems from a more fundamental way of thinking—First Principles.

What are First Principles?

This concept was first proposed by the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle. He defined a first principle as: "the first basis from which a thing is known... a basic proposition or assumption that cannot be deduced from any other proposition or assumption."

Simply put, it means stripping away the appearances of things until you are left with the most basic, unshakable facts, and then reasoning up from there.

Philosophical Roots: Inductive vs. Deductive Reasoning

To truly understand First Principles, we need to look at how it differs from conventional thinking from a logical perspective.

Inductive Reasoning: This is the foundation of Reasoning by Analogy. We observe events that have happened in the past, summarize patterns, and assume that the future will be the same. For example: "All swans observed in the past were white, so this new swan should also be white." Induction is efficient but prone to "Black Swan" events.
Deductive Reasoning: This is the foundation of First Principles. We start from a premise (axiom) that is necessarily true and derive a conclusion that is necessarily true. For example: "All men are mortal (axiom), Socrates is a man (fact), therefore Socrates is mortal (conclusion)."

First Principles require us to abandon "Empiricism" (Induction) and turn to "Rationalism" (Deduction), ensuring that our thinking is built on solid rock rather than shifting sand.

The Chef and the Cook: Two Mindsets

Famous blogger Tim Urban used the analogy of "Chef" and "Cook" to illustrate the difference between these two mindsets:

The Cook: Follows a recipe. If the recipe says "add two spoons of salt," he adds two spoons. He knows this makes the dish taste good, but he doesn't know why. If he loses the recipe, he is helpless. This is Reasoning by Analogy.
The Chef: Understands the chemistry of flavor and how ingredients interact. He doesn't need a recipe because he masters the essence of cooking. He can create entirely new dishes using existing ingredients. This is First Principles Thinking.

In business and life, the vast majority of people are "Cooks"; we are constantly copying and tweaking existing solutions. "Chefs," on the other hand, are the ones who break the rules and redefine the game.

Deconstruction and Reconstruction: Mental LEGO Blocks

First Principles is not just a slogan; it is a rigorous process of logical deduction. Imagine you are playing with LEGO blocks:

Deconstruction: Break down the finished product built by others (existing solutions) until only the most basic blocks remain (fundamental truths). These fundamental truths must be physical limits or logical axioms, not social habits.
Reconstruction: Looking at this pile of basic blocks, forget what the finished product looked like just now, and reassemble them into a new shape according to your true goal.

SpaceX: Deconstructing Rocket Costs

This is the most classic case. In 2002, Elon Musk wanted to go to Mars, but he found that buying rockets was extremely expensive (up to $65 million).

Reasoning by Analogy: "Rockets are just expensive; that's the norm in the aerospace industry."
First Principles:
- Deconstruction: What exactly is a rocket made of? Aerospace-grade aluminum alloys, titanium, copper, carbon fiber. How much are these raw materials worth on the market? It turned out that the cost of raw materials was only 2% of the rocket's finished price.
- Reconstruction: Since the materials are cheap, the high price comes from inefficiencies in the manufacturing process and layers of supply chain markups. If I can purchase raw materials and manufacture them myself, the cost can be drastically reduced. As a result, SpaceX reduced launch costs by more than 10 times.

Netflix: Reconstructing the Entertainment Experience

Netflix's success is also a victory for First Principles. In the era of DVD rentals, Blockbuster was the hegemon.

Reasoning by Analogy: To beat Blockbuster, I need more stores, lower rent, and faster return speeds.
First Principles:
- Deconstruction: What is the essential need of users? Not "renting discs," but "accessing entertainment content." The disc was just a physical carrier under the technical limitations of the time.
- Reconstruction: If internet bandwidth is large enough, why do we need physical carriers? Content can be transmitted directly via bitstreams. Thus, Netflix dared to revolutionize itself, shifting from a rental giant to a streaming service, completely changing the entertainment industry.

The Engineer's Way: From API to Principles

For software engineers, learning new technologies often involves choosing between these two mindsets.

Reasoning by Analogy: When learning React, rote memorizing APIs and lifecycle hooks. Copy-pasting similar code from StackOverflow when encountering problems. Once the framework updates (e.g., from Class Components to Hooks), you need to memorize again, feeling exhausted.
First Principles:
- Deconstruction: What is the essence of UI development? Regardless of the framework, the essence is UI = f(state). The core problem we need to solve is how to efficiently update the DOM tree when the state changes.
- Reconstruction: Understanding the Virtual DOM Diff algorithm and the principles of reactive data, you will find that React, Vue, and Svelte are just solving the same problem using different paths. Once you master the underlying principles, learning any new framework is just getting familiar with syntactic sugar.

Why is it Easier Said Than Done?

Since First Principles are so powerful, why don't we always use them? The reason lies in the dual resistance of biology and sociology.

Cognitive Miser: The brain is a high-energy-consuming organ (accounting for 2% of body weight but consuming 20% of energy). To survive, the brain has evolved an "energy-saving mode." Analogical thinking is low-energy "autopilot," while First Principles is high-energy "off-road driving." Unless necessary, the brain instinctively resists deep thinking.
Social Pressure: First Principles often mean challenging the status quo and authority. In a group, being an "outlier" is dangerous. We fear being ridiculed and isolated, which makes us tend to follow the crowd (Social Proof).

Practical Guide: How to Dig for Essence

To apply First Principles in daily life, we need powerful thinking tools to break cognitive inertia.

The "5 Whys" Analysis

This is a method proposed by Sakichi Toyoda, finding the root cause of a problem by asking "Why" at least five times consecutively.

Scenario: I want to write a blog, but I haven't started.

Why? Because I don't have time.
Why no time? Because I'm tired after work and just want to lie down and scroll through my phone.
Why just scroll through the phone? Because I think writing a blog is a huge, energy-consuming project that requires a large block of time.
Why do you think it requires a large block of time? Because I believe every article must be a 3000-word deep dive.
Why must it be a long article? (Epiphany Moment) Actually, no one ruled that blogs must be long. This is just my own assumption.

Conclusion: The root cause of not writing a blog is not "no time," but a "false perfectionist assumption." Reconstruction: I can start by writing short content of 100 words every day.

Socratic Questioning

This is a more rigorous questioning process used to challenge your intuition and assumptions:

Clarify Concepts: What exactly do I mean by this word? (e.g., "In this project, what counts as 'success'?")
Probe Assumptions: On what assumption did I base this conclusion? Is this assumption always true?
Probe Evidence: Is there solid data to support this view? Or is this just my feeling?
Consider Alternatives: If we don't do this, what other ways are there to achieve the goal?
Probe Consequences: If I am wrong, what is the worst outcome?

Beware of Traps: Don't Reinvent the Wheel

Although First Principles are powerful, they are extremely mentally draining. If you use First Principles for everything, you will hardly move an inch.

Don't use it in mature, low-value areas: You don't need to think about "what is the essence of a toothbrush" to invent a new way of brushing teeth. Just buy the best electric toothbrush.
Distinguish between "Ends" and "Means": First Principles are mainly used to examine whether the "means" are effective. If your "end" itself is wrong (e.g., wanting to build a perpetual motion machine), First Principles will tell you that this violates the laws of physics.

Conclusion

In 95% of daily life, using reasoning by analogy (autopilot mode) is efficient and necessary. You don't need to use First Principles to think about how to cross the road.

But when facing key decisions, complex problems, or seeking innovative breakthroughs, please stop, turn off "autopilot," try to think like a scientist, retreat to the most basic facts, and rethink everything. When you strip away all the "everyone else does it this way," what remains is infinite possibility.

First Principles: The Meta-Cognitive Strategy for Breaking Rules