First Principles as a Life Strategy (vineet.bearblog.dev)

"Pioneered 2000 years ago by Aristotle and popularized most recently by Elon Musk, First Principles is a method of reasoning which involves breaking down a complex problem into its most fundamental parts and reasoning upwards from there."

Coincidentally, I recently got into running too and have adopted a similar strategy - except mine was inspired by Kaizen principles as adapted to daily life - improvements in small increments so they aren’t overwhelming my existing routine so I have a better chance at consistency and habit formation.

"[...] human transport is still archaic and restricted to one plane. Let's change that by boring underground transportation tunnels.

Oh, yeah, sure, d'oh! No one ever thought of anything like that before. No sir, nuh-uh.

I like what the author is trying to say but the way he put it sounds a little too much like a fanboy.

Most of everything is build on first principles. That's am important part of any scientific process.