fpt.guide

The ultimate guide to first-principles thinking

17 followers

The ultimate guide to first-principles thinking

17 followers

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fpt.guide is a rich treasure trove of resources to help you become a first-principles thinker. It walks you through the most fundamental lessons from a diverse mix of Math, Econ, Game-theory, Evolution, Signaling theory, mental-models, and more.

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Thanks a lot for the content. I was wondering if that is any way I can save it on my Notion? Thank you!

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6yr ago

fpt.guide

Maker

@lohran Hey, thank you! For saving, have you tried duplicating into a Notion page?

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6yr ago

Valosan PR Network Platform

There’s so rarely philosophy on Product Hunt! Nice collection, and good work cutting large knowledge areas into digestible chunks. In the interest of first principles, should you consider listing your premises? The framing of the topics is libertarian, reductionist, and generally limited to methodological individualism. I don’t know if that can be avoided, though. First-principles thinking favors reductionism because of its agenda to describe causal explanations. That's an epistemic, arguably even an ontological position. And in practice in social human realms such causal explanations with predictive power have been elusive. In FPT.guide, all of the economics and most of the psychology and philosophy sources display a commitment to reductionist (genetic, individualistic, etc) causal explanations. But going up the reductionist ladder, multiple levels of explanation become real by the level of evolutionary group selection, and from there “up” things just get more complex through psychology and social psychology all the way to anthropology and economics in the more complex end. In other words, turns out the first principles have quite a few underlying principles, one of them methodological individualism. So first-principles thinking is not close to giving us "fundamental principles" from which "all complex phenomen[a] in life" flow, though it is clearly appealing. Instead of trying to fix first-principles, maybe just include a disclaimer that first-principles is just one attempt of many at explain the world.

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6yr ago

fpt.guide

Maker

@mhj really appreciate your comment. You touch on some important philosophical roots of this project. If you'd like to continue this conversation and get an insider look at everything we are up to, I can invite you to our Slack community. Please let me know!

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6yr ago

fpt.guide

Maker

Hey everyone, Information is free and abundant today. What remains scarce is insight. Given a constant barrage of information thrown at us, how do you actually find out what's true? By becoming a clear, first-principles thinker. "I think it’s important to reason from first principles rather than by analogy. The normal way we conduct our lives is we reason by analogy." -- Elon Musk fpt.guide collects and organizes a Minimum Spanning Tree of the most fundamental principles from Maths, Physics, Econ, Game Theory, Computation, mental models, and more. All complex phenomenon in life is downstream of these fundamental concepts. Be it startups, social affairs, or interpersonal relationships – mastering fpt.guide will help you think clearly through all of it. We – I'm Ayush, and I just graduated from MIT with two degrees in Computer Science. Rahul (@raulgarg) is an entrepreneur and a college dropout in India. @sidharthajha is a recent grad working full-time in tech while writing regularly on his Substack. We built fpt.guide working across three time-zones! Please let us know if you have any feedback/questions at all about fpt.guide. We can't wait for you to explore it.

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6yr ago

Nice work. Design Thinking (DT) though? I can't look at it the same way since Nastsag Jen's teardown of it and few others (though I still take value from it with a large dose of salt). But irrespective of whether those are merely contrarian views, is DT first-principles?

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6yr ago

fpt.guide

Maker

@lynnastyie that's a fair question. I think it could be argued either way. We choose to include because we thought it'd be a new modality of thinking for most of our readers who may not be familiar with it at all.

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6yr ago

@ayushswrites Got you.

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6yr ago

The v1 had been a great resource to revisit some of the basic principles of thinking that are easily lost in adulthood. Excited to see the v2 come out with more resources and suggestions from experts. While being thorough, the simple navigation also makes it digestible. It would be fun to see a print version come out as a pocket-friendly guide.

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6yr ago

fpt.guide

Maker

@rj_wolv thanks a ton!

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6yr ago