When I hear the term “First Principles,” I think of building something from scratch. What are the bedrock facts and what can we deduce from them? But deriving feels hard.
Another approach is to take the negative. Anything that goes against a First Principle must be wrong. You don’t have to expand on the idea of conservation of energy, if you hear an idea that violates conservation of energy, it must be wrong. This feels like an easier application of First Principles.
We know that incentives drive behavior, I would say this is a principle of human behavior. So when you don’t take into consideration how humans are incentivized, you’re not going to get the behavior you expect.
Example, assuming that a politician is looking out for the good of the people.
Charlie Munger has a list of twenty-five human misjudgements. What if we take this list as First Principles? What if we eliminate all of our assumptions that violate these misjudgements?