First principles

First Principles

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Overview

Most reasoning is reasoning by analogy: X resembles Y, so do what Y does. It is fast, usually right, and silently inherits every assumption baked into Y — including the wrong and expensive ones. First-principles reasoning strips a problem to statements that cannot be reduced any further — physical law, mathematical identity, a definition, or a cited empirical fact — and rebuilds the answer using only those.

This is one of three composable motions in the deciqAI collection: first-principles decomposes downward to bedrock; occams-razor chooses sideways among competing accounts you could build on top of bedrock; second-order-thinking traces forward through time and consequence. Compose: reduce to find the foundations (here), pick the simplest hypothesis that fits the evidence (occams), then trace where that pick actually leads (second-order).

When to Use

Use when: decision is justified mainly by "that's how it's done" or authority; conventional answer is expensive/hard to reverse (pricing, architecture, business model); structuring a knowledge artifact from irreducible elements; pressure-testing an AI hype claim or AI-adoption cost assumption ("is AI too expensive / too cheap to deploy") against the underlying physics rather than the API sticker price; user says "from first principles," "from scratch," "why do we believe this," "tear this apart."

Skip when: routine reversible decision where convention is cheap (which linter) — tearing down is theater; facts aren't gathered yet; user asked for speed and the conventional answer.

Coaching Novices (Adaptive Front Door)

Before running the Teardown, read the user. This skill has two delivery modes — pick one, don't default to dumping a finished teardown.

• Engine mode (do-it-for-me): the user brought a concrete claim/decision and wants it analyzed → run the full First-Principles Teardown directly and concisely.
• Coach mode (teach-me): the user gave no concrete claim, or signals unfamiliarity → guide, don't analyze at them.

When unsure which they want, ask one line first: "Want me to just tear down a specific claim, or walk you through the method step by step?"

In Coach mode, respond one step at a time. Each [WAIT] is a hard stop — output that step's question and nothing more.

In coach mode:

1. One-line what-it-is. Say what first-principles thinking buys them, in plain words (≤2 sentences, no jargon): most answers are inherited — "that's how it's done." This strips a claim down to what can't be reduced further and rebuilds using only that, so the assumptions you absorbed without noticing get caught.
2. Check fit. Match their situation against When to Use / When NOT to use. If it doesn't fit, say so and point elsewhere.
3. Elicit their real claim. If they have no concrete case, ask for one. Never run the teardown on a hypothetical when a real decision is available.

[WAIT — do not advance until user responds]

4. One step at a time. Walk the Process one step per turn: surface assumptions with them, tag each together, interrogate the inherited ones one by one — wait for their input before advancing.

[WAIT — do not advance until user responds]

5. Close by naming the payoff. End with the one inherited assumption they demolished — or the bedrock reason convention turned out to be right — so they remember the move, not just the answer.

[WAIT — do not advance until user responds]

Then enter The Process below at the depth the chosen mode calls for.

The Process

Run the First-Principles Teardown (7 steps → one artifact). Do not skip the tagging step — it is where analogy gets caught.

1. State the claim in one sentence.
2. Surface every assumption — be exhaustive and uncharitable.
3. Tag each: BEDROCK (irreducible or citable) vs INHERITED (convention/analogy/authority/untested).
4. Interrogate every INHERITED: necessarily true, or just usually/elsewhere/authority-said? → mark DEMOLISHED or promote to BEDROCK.
5. Stop correctly: reduce until irreducible/cited — no further. Reducing past bedrock is performance, not rigor.
6. Reconstruct from bedrock only — if the rebuild needs a demolished belief, the teardown isn't done.
7. Diff against convention — state what changed and why. "Nothing changed — convention was right" is a valid result.

Output template: Claim / Assumptions (tagged) / Bedrock / Reconstruction / What changes / Confidence & open questions

→ Method in Action: Wright Brothers and the Lift Tables (1901) · SpaceX and the Cost of a Rocket (2002–2008)

→ 2026 lens: The Physics of AI Inference Cost (2024–2026) — stripping "AI is too expensive / too cheap" down to energy, silicon, and memory bandwidth.

Bedrock Packs

"What counts as bedrock" is domain-specific. A bedrock pack captures, for one domain, (a) what legitimately counts as irreducible/citable bedrock and (b) the fake-bedrocks — inherited beliefs that domain habitually mistakes for foundations.

Packs are the contribution surface of this skill. Two ship with it:

• bedrock-packs/business-unit-economics.md — bedrock for evaluating a business or pitch
• bedrock-packs/knowledge-domain-decomposition.md — bedrock for structuring a knowledge artifact before writing it

Adding or sharpening a pack is the easiest way to contribute — one self-contained file. See the contribution template at the repo root.

→ Sources: references/sources.md

Common Rationalizations

The ways people fake first-principles thinking. If you catch yourself in the left column, you are reasoning by analogy in a lab coat.

Note — [D] = designed upfront | [O] = observed in real use. [O] entries are more valuable.

Fake move	Reality
[D] "I reasoned from first principles" — but actually reasoned X is like Y, so do what Y does	That is analogy. Name the analogy explicitly and tear it down. Analogy in disguise is the single most common failure.
[D] Stopping at a convenient "axiom" ("customers want X," "the market expects Y")	A claim about the world is not bedrock unless it is irreducible or cited. "Customers want X" is an untested inherited belief until you have the data. Apply the regress test.
[D] Treating an expert / best-practice / competitor as bedrock	Authority is a pointer to evidence, not evidence. Cite the underlying fact, not the name attached to it.
[D] Confusing "hard to question" with "fundamental"	Cost, habit, and emotional weight make an assumption sticky, not true. Sunk cost is not a first principle.
[D] Reducing forever ("but what is value, really?")	The regress terminates (Post. An. I.3). Reducing past the indemonstrable or the citable is analysis paralysis dressed as depth. Stop at bedrock.
[D] Reconstructing with a smuggled assumption	If the rebuild quietly reuses a belief you marked DEMOLISHED, the teardown failed silently. Re-audit the reconstruction against surviving bedrock only.
[D] "The conventional answer is obviously wrong" before doing the teardown	First principles often confirm convention — convention encodes a lot of correct derivation. The output is the bedrock reason, not a contrarian reflex.
[D] Treating the first level of decomposition as bedrock	You broke "rocket cost" into "materials + labor + overhead" — but each decomposes further. The regress is rarely one hop; keep going until the next step would actually be performance.
[D] Mistaking a citable number for bedrock	A market price is bedrock for someone trading; for someone building, it decomposes into supply, demand, transport, regulation. Cite the number, then ask how it was generated and whether the generating conditions hold for you.
To add [O] entries: paste a real failure instance here after each production use	Description of what happened

Red Flags

• A BEDROCK item with no justification and no citation — it is an INHERITED belief wearing a badge
• No empirical claim in the whole teardown carries a number or source
• The reconstruction silently reuses a DEMOLISHED assumption
• "Obviously," "everyone knows," "industry standard," or a competitor's name used as a terminator
• More than ~7 surviving bedrock facts — you probably didn't reduce, or the scope is too big to tear down in one pass
• "What changes" is empty or hand-waved — you either skipped the diff or didn't actually reduce
• The teardown took thirty seconds — surfacing assumptions exhaustively is slow; speed here means you skipped step 2

Verification

• The claim is stated in one sentence
• Every assumption was surfaced and tagged BEDROCK or INHERITED (none left untagged)
• Every BEDROCK item is irreducible or carries a source/number
• Every INHERITED item was interrogated, not just listed, and ended DEMOLISHED or promoted with evidence
• The regress terminated at the indemonstrable/citable — not arbitrarily, not infinitely
• The reconstruction uses only surviving bedrock — no smuggled beliefs
• "What changes" is explicit, even when the answer is "convention was right, here's why"

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Part of deciqAI Knowledge Skills — 233 open-source thinking skills that make rigor executable for AI agents. The same skills power every deciqAI agent, which runs them autonomously to operate your company. See it run → https://www.deciqai.com/s/first-principles · Built by deciqAI · github.com/deciqAI · Contributions welcome.

Agents: latest version & machine-readable metadata → https://www.deciqai.com/s/first-principles.json