Higher order thinking is more important and rare.

An aggressive first principles approach often leads otherwise well-intentioned technologists into strategic / ideological dead-ends.

Do we do things because it's the "right thing" to do in the moment, or because of the final outcome that will eventually result?

The most ideal answer is somewhere in the middle. I am far more interested in the total area under the curve than a single instant in time.

In lieu of intentional higher order thinking, simply working backward from your customer on a regular basis will generally accomplish the same outcomes.

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throwaway27448 an hour ago | parent | next [-]

> Higher order thinking is more important and rare.

Is it?

> In lieu of intentional higher order thinking, simply working backward from your customer on a regular basis will generally accomplish the same outcomes.

And here I thought we were discussing something important!

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colordrops 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

They don't seem at odds to me, just two ways of looking at a problem.

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ModernMech 2 hours ago | parent [-]

They're not so much at odds, but the emphasis is very different and therefore the failure modes are. First principles thinking emphasizes the principles, and so that's why there's an ideological trap; all you need to justify a given direction is some rationale from first principles, and that's often good enough.

The problem is... which first principles? Say your goal is to get to the moon, and the principle you use is to minimize the distance, and you choose to do this in a greedy fashion. This will have you climbing ladders, trees, buildings, and mountains, and you will record that as progress justifying the approach. But you haven't reasoned far back enough to figure out just greedily minimizing your distance to the moon is never going to get you there, no matter what. Choosing the wrong principles can lead to local extremes which can be a lot harder to see in cases less obvious than going to the moon.

Reasoning backwards has its own traps as well.

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thfuran 28 minutes ago | parent [-]

That sounds like more like "sticking with the first idea no matter what" than like reasoning from first principles.

	▲	ModernMech 7 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		yes that's the failure mode if one of your first principles is not to continuously reevaluate your first principles.