#45
How do you think / solve problems (first principles, algorithm)?
Interviews
3
Answers
3
X posts
4
Span
2023 to 2025
First asked Nov 9, 2023, most recently Jun 19, 2025. Excerpts below are from machine transcripts with filler words (um, uh, you know) and stutters removed; … marks a cut. They are not checked word for word, so use the link to hear the exact words, or the transcript link for the raw text. Timestamps: 2 cross-checked against YouTube captions, 0 from the archive transcript only, 1 unverified caption-only. X has no link-to-time option, so X links open at the start.
How the answer evolved · oldest first
Nov 9, 2023 · Lex Fridman Podcast · asked by Lex Fridman
Q: Sort of the sexiest discovery of them is as we know now, sort of unifying general relativity and quantum mechanics, so coming up with a theory of everything, do you think it could push towards that direction? Almost like theoretical …
If an AI cannot figure out new physics, it's clearly not equal to humans, let alone, nor has surpassed humans, because humans have figured out new physics. Physics is just understanding, deepening one's insight into how reality works. And then there's engineering, which is inventing things that have never existed. Now the range of possibilities for engineering is far greater than for physics because once you figure …
Mar 17, 2025 · Verdict with Ted Cruz · asked by Ted Cruz
Q: But, but what's interesting is you're you may even be better at execution, which is, how do you execute so effectively?
Well, I take a physics first principles approach to everything. It's not as though I wanted to in source manufacturing, it's just that I was unable to outsource it effectively. So the idea at the beginning of Tesla was that we would outsource almost all the manufacturing, but that it turned out there were no good companies to outsource manufacturing to which there wasn't really, it wasn't feasible. Outsourced …
Jun 19, 2025 · Elon Musk: Digital Superintelligence, Multiplanetary Life, How to Be Useful · asked by unknown
Q: do you tell them when you're like you need to make your way in this world here you know here's how to construct a reality that is predictive from first principles?
Well, the tools of physics are incredibly helpful to understand and make progress in any field. the first principles mean just obviously just means you know break things down to the fundamental axiomatic elements that are most likely to be true and then reason up from there as cogently as possible as opposed to reasoning by analysis or metaphor. and then you just simple things like thinking in the limit like if you extrapolate you know minimize …
In his own posts on X
@elonmusk · Dec 13, 2024
@thinkingwest Spengler did too much reasoning from historical examples and not enough reasoning from first principles. The role of technology is not properly appreciated by most historians, as they have no idea how physics actually works. It all seems like magic to them.
View on X ↗@elonmusk · Feb 17, 2025
Reasoning from first principles is a superpower https://t.co/smN0lsUlqV
View on X ↗@elonmusk · May 24, 2025
@techdevnotes Reasoning from first principles (truth)
View on X ↗@elonmusk · Apr 17, 2026
Tesla engineering redesigned lithium refining from physics first principles https://t.co/wQuCk0gbqB
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