First-principles reasoning (a note on separating ideas from the people who held them)
An old note on Elon Musk's first-principles reasoning, updated for 2026. The politics and the personality have not aged well; the reasoning technique still has.
#philosophy
3 posts
impostor syndrome or nonlinear life?
One of the most exhilarating observations of physics and mathematics for me, comes from understanding the concept of nonlinearity. i.e. inputs don't necessarily need to be…
nonlinearity, why it makes sense to think big
The world is nonlinear. Most outcomes worth wanting do not cost proportionally more effort, they cost different effort. And once you accept that, Richard Hamming's 1986 lecture on doing important research stops sounding like advice and starts sounding like a corollary.