First Principles Thinking [Elon Musk]

The Swyx Mixtape

Listen to the Lex Fridman podcast (25mins in): https://lexfridman.com/elon-musk-3/

How I Approach First Principles Thinking via Logic and Epistemology

Transcript

So what's your source of belief in situations like this when the engineering problem is so difficult, there's a lot of experts, many of whom you admire, who have failed in the past. Yes. And a lot of people, you know, a lot of experts, maybe journalists, all the kinds of, you know, the public in general have a lot of doubt about whether it's possible and you yourself know that even if it's a, non-normal set, not empty set of success, it's still unlikely or very difficult. Like where do you go to both personally, intellectually as an engineer, as a team, like for source of strength needed to sort of persevere through this and to keep going with the project, take it to completion.

2

00:24:49

I suppose the strength. Hmm. I just really not how I think about things. I mean, for me, it's simply this, this is something that is important to get done, and we, we should just keep doing it or die trying, and I, I don't need, I source of strength. So

0

00:25:07

Quitting is not even like, I'm

2

00:25:10

Just not, it's not in my nature. Okay. And I, I don't care about optimism or pessimism, fuck that. We're going to get it done. Gotta to get it done.

0

00:25:23

Can you then zoom back in to specific problems with Starship or any engineering problems you work on? Can you try to introspect your particular biologic when you're in that network, your thinking process, and describe how you think through problems, the different engineering and design problems. Is there like a systematic process you've spoken about first principles thinking kind of,

2

00:25:45

Well, you know, like saying like, like physics is low and everything else was a recommendation. I'm like, I've met a lot of people that can break the law, but I, I have never met anyone who could break physics. So, so first for any kind of technology problem, you have to sort of just make sure you're not violating physics. And, you know, first principles analysis, I think, is something that can be applied to really any walk of life, any anything really? It's just, it's, it's really just saying, you know, let's, let's boil something down to the most fundamental principles.

2

00:26:29

The things that we are most confident are true at a foundational level, and that sits your at your sets, your axiomatic base, and then you reason up from there. And then you cross check your conclusion against the, the axiomatic truth. So, you know, some basics in physics would be like, oh, you Vida and conservation of energy or momentum or something like that, you know, then you're slugging to work. So that's yeah. So that's just to establish it. Is it, is it, is it possible? And then another good physics tool is thinking about things in the limit. If you, if you take a particular thing and you scale it to a very large number or to very small number, how does, how does things change

0

00:27:17

Like temporary, like in number of things, you manufacturer, something like that. And then in time,

2

00:27:23

Yeah. Like, let's say, take example of like, like manufacturing, which I think is just a very underrated problem. And, and like I said, it's, it's much harder to take a, an advanced technology product and bring it into volume manufacturing than it is to design it in the first place. My more's magnitude. So, so let's say, you're trying to figure out is like, why is this, this part or product expensive? Is it because of something fundamentally foolish that we're doing? Or is it because our volume is too low? And so then you say, okay, well, what if our volume was a million units a year?

2

00:28:05

Is it still expensive? That's what I'm invaluable thinking about things to the limit. If it's too expensive at a million units a year, then volume is not the reason why your thing is expensive. There's something fundamental about design.

0

00:28:16

And then you then can focus on the reducing complexity or something like that.

2

00:28:19

We could change the design to change the chains apart to be something that is not fundamentally expensive, but like, that's a common thing in rocketry. Cause the, the unit volume is relatively low. And so a common excuse would be well, it's expensive because our unit volume is low. And if we were in like automotive or something like that, or consumer electronics, then our costs would be lower on like unlike. Okay. So let's say now you're making a million units a year. Is it still expensive? The answer is yes. Then economies of scale are not the issue.

0

00:28:53

Do you throw into manufacturing? Do you throw like supply chain, you talked about resources and materials and stuff like that. Do you throw that into the calculation of trying to reason from first principles? Like how are we going to make the supply chain work here? Yeah, yeah. And then the cost of materials, things like that, or is that too?

2

00:29:10

Exactly. So like another, like a good example, I, of thinking about things in the limit is if you take any, you know, any, any product, a machine or whatever, like take a rocket or whatever, and say, if you've got, if you look at the raw raw materials in the rocket, so you're going to have like an aluminum steel titanium in canal, especially specialty alloys, copper. And you say, what are the, what's the weight of the constituent elements of each of these elements and what is their own material value?

2

00:29:54

And that sets the asymptotic limit for how low the cost of the vehicle can be, unless you change the materials. So, and then when you do that, call it like maybe the magic one number or something like that. So that would be like, if you had the, you know, like just a pile of these raw materials here, and you could wave a magic wand and rearrange the atoms into the final shape, that would be the lowest possible cost that you could make this thing for, unless you change the materials. So then, and that is always, almost always a very low number. So then the what's actually causing these to be expensive is how you put the atoms into the desired shape.

0

00:30:37

Yeah. Actually, if you don't mind me taking a tiny tangent, had a, I often talked to Jim Keller, who's somebody that work with use.

2

00:30:45

Yeah. Jim was a great work at Tesla.

0

00:30:49

So I suppose he carries the flame of the same kind of thinking that you're, you're talking about now. And I, I guess I see the same thing at Tesla and, and space X folks who work there, they kind of learn this way of thinking and it kinda becomes obvious almost. But anyway, I had argument, not argument. He educated me about how cheap it might be to manufacture a Tesla bought. We just, we had an argument. What is, how can you reduce the cost of s...