First Principles Thinking

March 27, 2024

Re-learning how to think.

A few weeks ago, I had one of the most interesting conversations of my life.

He was one of the biggest first-principles thinkers I’d ever met. His thought and demeanor was opinionated, assertive, and almost egotistical, yet humble and unassuming. Every question, statement, and opinion he threw at me was holistic, rigorous, and agreeable. Though from the perspective of society his opinions were controversial, in my eyes they were rational.

I absorbed so much from that one conversation, I could describe it for hours. But I walked away from it with one thought: how could I become a better thinker?

I, like many others, have been told to think from first principles. Though I knew the concept, there is a strong difference between knowing and understanding. That conversation led me to truly consider what first principles thinking is and what it looks like in action.

What is first principles thinking?

First principles thinking is a framework for approaching ideas and decisions to come to optimal conclusions. It requires breaking down our thoughts into fundamental assumptions and principles to deduce what is true vs. false and good vs. bad. In first principles, you may think in a way that’s considered controversial or contrarian, but it’s really just organic thinking. It enables your opinionated view of the world to shine into your decision-making, free from societal norms and pre-conceived perspectives.

The quality of first principles relies on how well we can determine what is either true vs. false and good vs. bad. But, answering these questions must be approached very differently.

Determining what is true vs. false is dependent on your worldview. Your worldview is simply your unbiased understanding of the world and how it works, enabling you to see what is true and false. How well do you understand the world and its history? How well do you understand the factors of the situation at hand? How much domain knowledge or experience do you have in hopes to improve the quality of your decisions? In a perfectly educated world, everyone should be able to answer what is true and false, accurately and truthfully.

But, how do you determine what is good vs. bad? Your values.

Determining what is good or bad is purely contextual to who you are. For example, I could ask the same question, “Should I be a startup founder?”, and a good answer could be completely different for two different people? Why? Because those people were raised differently, have different beliefs and morals, have different skills and interests, and have different ambitions for the future.

Your values, and the context of your life, are the key factors in classifying what is good or bad. The decision between what is good vs. bad in first principles thinking always seems to be overlooked for what is true vs. false, when decisions between good vs. bad always seem to be the hardest to answer.

Building your worldview

Your worldview informs how well you can determine what is true vs. false in first principles thinking. You build your worldview through learning and synthesis of the world around you. As described in Principles by Ray Dalio, synthesis is the conversion of data to an accurate understanding. Again, there’s a difference between knowing and understanding something, and synthesis is one of the best ways to start to truly understand something.

The idea of synthesizing information is pretty abstract and self-explanatory, but the golden rule is this: The value you get out of learning is determined by the rigor you put into it. Rigorous thinking and questioning makes synthesis more accurate and efficient, sharpening your information input to be more concrete, direct, and unbiased.

Try visualizing thinking as a RAG system, where our worldview represents the knowledge base. A polished RAG retrieval system takes in user inputs, synthesizes them for optimal knowledge retrieval, fetches relevant data from data sources, and utilizes that data to generate the desired output. Thinking can be represented similarly: we use situational context (questions, decisions) as input, we synthesize them using rigor and critical thinking, we query our existing understanding of the world, and use that understanding to inform our conclusion.

While thinking can be represented with RAG retrieval, learning can be represented with RAG data ingestion. With any knowledge base, it’s essential to make it accurate and high-quality, being wary of data poisoning or inaccuracy. A polished data ingestion system takes in a large sum of information and synthesizes it by chunking, summarizing, and fact-checking the information before storing it. This idea of information synthesis before storage can be reflected in how we learn and expand our worldview.

Realizing your values

Your worldview can be built, but values are realized. Your values are invaluable, as they represent who you are and who you wish to be in the future. It’s not as easy as reading a book to discover your values — it requires introspection and feedback from trusted friends and family. Your values can be inspired by many things: religion, morals, preferences on the life you want to live, etc.

Re-visiting the RAG system analogy, your values can be represented as alignment policies and prompts. These policies and prompts don’t necessarily bias the ingestion and retrieval of data in the knowledge base, but they shape the way the output is generated. Though something may be true, it may not be _good _in the context of your values, and your values can override the objective reasoning system in the best interest of the system.

In the picture of the RAG system, alignment policies and prompts are also more thoughtfully updated in comparison to the knowledge base. Knowledge bases update when new information is ingested, but policies and prompts are carefully updated by developers when certain patterns and outputs are observed and considered. This is representative of real thinking: you should learn new things every day and expand your worldview frequently, but your values should be updated thoughtfully through introspection and feedback from the world.

The overall relationship between your worldview and values should be separate. Keeping your worldview as a completely unbiased, objective view of the world creates an understanding that is not necessarily subscribed to, but accurate. Keeping your values as a completely personal, contextual view of your life enables the ability to truly consider oneself in thinking and decision-making without the bias of society. When you keep your worldview and values separate, you can more effectively determine what is true vs. false and good vs. bad, and ultimately come to decisions and ideas that are both true and good.

Moving forward

Changing the way we think is hard because it’s so instinctual. We think and make decisions constantly and changing such a strong habit is no easy task. I initially wrote this post proposing a completely new thinking framework, but I realized that’s too hard to apply.

If you haven’t already adopted first principles thinking, I highly recommend doing so. It’s easy to think the same way as everyone else, it’s hard to think for yourself.

If you’ve already adopted first principles thinking, realize the basic mechanics behind how first principles thinking even works: determining what is true and false, good and bad.

Improve your judgment of true and false through your worldview. Read books, learn history, travel the world, experience new things. Be a generalist of knowledge and improve your understanding of the world every day. Be rigorous in learning and synthesizing your understanding of the world, and be unbiased and unattached in your association to your worldview.

Improve your judgment of good and bad by understanding yourself and your values. Introspect and realize what you value in your life and what you want your life to look like in the future. Be crystal clear to yourself on your values and prioritize them above everything else: your worldview, societal norms, even the opinions of loved ones. Update them thoughtfully as your worldview expands and your life experience grows.

Ultimately, how we think informs everything we do in life. No one can tell you how to think, just how no one can give unbiased thoughts. The most important thing to takeaway is this: think for yourself.

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