Elon Musk Accidentally Reveals His "SECRET HACK" In An Interview

honestly after sitting down and talking to him i realized that i'm i'm now convinced that he's an alien i really i mean there's what what other answer is there during a one-on-one interview with chris anderson musk reveals this missing link which he attributes to his genius level creativity and success well i do think there's a good framework for thinking it is physics boil things down to their fundamental truths and reason up from there as opposed to reasoning by analogy through most of our life we get through life by reasoning by analogy which essentially means copying what other people do with slight variations said elon musk a first principle is a basic assumption that cannot be deduced any further over two thousand years ago aristotle defined a first principle as the first basis from which a thing is known first principles thinking is a fancy way of saying think like a scientist scientists don't assume anything they start with questions like what are we absolutely sure is true what has been proven essentially first principles thinking will help you develop a unique world view to innovate and solve difficult problems in a way that nobody else can even fathom i'd like to ask him about his thought process and also i'm really curious about how in the world he manages to do multiple impossible things because doing one impossible thing is impossible but doing like five impossible things is the product of five impossibilities and that just seems like hyper impossible but he's managed it while musk admits that arguing from first principles takes a lot more mental energy you can end up with novel or even groundbreaking results these fundamental principles are basically the most basic truths or elements of anything the best way to uncover these truths is to ask powerful questions that uncover these ingenious gems here's a quick example from elon musk during an interview with kevin rose on how this works do you example that like what's one thing that you've done that on that you feels worked for you sure so um somebody could say that battery packs are really expensive and that's just the way they will always be because that's the way they've been in the past so first principles we say okay what are the material constituents of the batteries what is the spot market value of the material constituents so you can say okay it's got cobalt nickel aluminum carbon and some polymers for separation and a steel can so break that down in on a material basis and say if we bought that on the london metal exchange what would each of those things cost like oh it's like 80 dollars per kilowatt hour so clearly you just need to think of clever ways to take those materials and combine them into the shape of a battery cell and you can have batteries that are much much cheaper than anyone realizes first principles thinking helps you to cobble together information from different disciplines to create new ideas and innovations you start by getting to the facts once you have a foundation of facts you can make a plan to improve each little piece this process naturally leads to exploring widely for better substitutes the human tendency for imitation is a common roadblock to first principles thinking when most people envision the future they project the current form forward rather than projecting the function forward and abandoning the form for instance when criticizing technological progress some people ask where are the flying cars here's the thing we have flying cars they're called airplanes people who ask this question are so focused on form a flying object that looks like a car that they overlook the function transportation by flight this is what elon musk is referring to when he says that people often live life by analogy after our meeting i sent him a tweet saying the world wants to know uh are you an alien and he responded saying no i'm not but i used to be usually when we're faced with complex problems we default to thinking like everybody else first principles thinking is a powerful way to help you break out of this herd mentality think outside the box and innovate completely brand new solutions to familiar problems by identifying your current assumptions breaking these down into their basic truths and creating solutions from scratch you can uncover these ingenious solutions to complex problems and make unique contributions in any field many of the most groundbreaking ideas in history have been a result of boiling things down to the first principles and then substituting a more effective solution for one of the key parts for instance johannes gutenberg combined the technology of a screw press a device used for making wine with movable type paper and ink to create the printing press movable type had been used for centuries but gutenberg was the first person to consider the constituent parts of the process and adapt technology from an entirely different field to make printing far more efficient the result was a world-changing innovation and the widespread distribution of information for the first time in history the best solution is not where everyone is already looking be wary of the ideas you inherit old conventions and previous forms are often accepted without question and once accepted they set a boundary around creativity this difference is one of the key distinctions between continuous improvement and first principles thinking continuous improvement tends to occur within the boundary set by the original vision by comparison first principles thinking requires you to abandon your allegiance to previous forms and put the function front and center what are you trying to accomplish what is the functional outcome you are looking to achieve optimize the function ignore the form this is how you learn to think for [Laughter] [Music] yourself

Channel: Video Advice

Views: 1,758,105

Rating: 4.8492308 out of 5

Keywords: video advice, video advic elon, video advice elon musk, elon musk video, elon musk hack, elon musk secret hack, elon musk it take more mental energy, mental energy elon musk, elon accidentally reveals

Id: RtIozaY_6Ps

Length: 6min 48sec (408 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 20 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/westwoo]

Famous and successful people are famously awful at understanding the reasons for their own success and teaching others to be successful.

You know who could give an excellent advice about human behavioral psychology and ways of thinking? Not an engineer entrepreneur.

[u/FlowAtSnow]

who is Musk?

[u/[deleted]]

So in summation, is it leaning towards abstract thinking?