Theory: The Socratic method and first-principles thinking converge on the same desired outcome — undeniable truth.
These are the preferred algorithms of thought for some of the most revolutionary thinkers in history: Socrates, Benjamin Franklin, Richard Feynman, Einstein, Elon Musk, …
To identify the commonality between these two converging algorithms would be to say something about the nature of uncovering important truth.
The Socratic method is top-down.
We start with a claim, and we ask, “Is that actually true? And if yes, do you know why? Can we prove it at the extremes?”1 a bunch of times.
To find alpha in conventional wisdom, we can just dive deeply from the top of some branch.
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First-principles thinking is bottom-up.
We start from fundamentals, and we ask, “if we build upward from these known-true foundations, what then is necessarily true?”
Then we can compare the results to a branch of conventional wisdom. The alpha is in the diff.
Footnotes
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Here’s the book I read only part of ↩
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In the realm of Good Startup Ideas, maybe Talking To Users is a good way to build a model of the Conventional Truth Graph. this would also explain why “customers are good at identifying problems but not good at proposing solutions to those problems”: most of the best solutions will be derived from those margins ↩
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If curious, here is a scratchpad containing the messy zero-th draft that came before this one ↩