Scientific Definition
Reasoning from foundational truths rather than from analogy or convention.
Plain-English Definition
Reasoning from foundational truths rather than from analogy or convention.
Feynman Explanation
Most 'best practices' are unexamined assumptions in a suit.
Core Principle
Reasoning from foundational truths rather than from analogy or convention.
Mechanisms
Pending editorial review.
Reasoning from foundational truths rather than from analogy or convention.
Pending editorial review.
Pending editorial review.
Pending editorial review.
Pending editorial review.
First principles unlock strategy where convention has trapped everyone.
Inputs (Triggers)
Pending editorial review.
Outputs (Behaviors)
Pending editorial review.
Behavioral Signature
Most 'best practices' are unexamined assumptions in a suit.
Examples
- Musk on rocket cost: decompose to raw materials, rebuild the math.
- First principles unlock strategy where convention has trapped everyone.
Pending editorial review.
Famous Experiments
Pending editorial review.
Design Principles
- Annually attack five foundational assumptions in your strategy.
Measurement Approaches
Pending editorial review.
Evidence
Pending editorial review.
Pending editorial review.
The Perverse Incentive Lens™
How this behavior is exploited — and how to redesign around it.
- Annually attack five foundational assumptions in your strategy.
Pending editorial review.
Pending editorial review.
Interactive Mini Network
Click any neighbor to re-center the graph and follow the threads of connection.
Knowledge Graph Neighbors
Auto-linked to the rest of the Human Behavior Taxonomy by family, domain, dimension, and shared keywords.
Break a problem down to irreducible truths and rebuild from there.
Imagining what could have happened instead of what did.
Expecting change to happen at a constant rate.
Deriving general rules from specific examples; the leap from instance to concept.
The brain evolved to reason adaptively, not always truthfully, to reduce the cost of errors.
We solve problems by adding, even when subtracting would be better.
Assuming that if one option is true, another must be false, when both can be true.
Presuming a purposeful actor behind events that may have no actor at all.
What cannot be settled by experiment is not worth debating.
A finite set of well-defined instructions for solving a problem or performing a computation.
Every model simplifies reality; some are still useful.
Researchers favor conclusions aligned with their school, team, or sponsor.