Musk: Don't rely on analogies, think from first principles!

In an interview, Musk pointed out that most people tend to think about problems by relying on "analogies" to attribute reasons, meaning they copy others' approaches—if others do it this way, so will I.

However, Musk immediately proposed his own way of thinking, which is the "first principle" approach, breaking things down to their most fundamental parts, starting from the essence of things, and then deducing step by step to rebuild understanding.

He used the example of "electric vehicle batteries": for instance, everyone says that batteries are expensive as a matter of course because they have always been this expensive for a long time.

But if you start from the "first principles", you should ask: what are batteries actually made of? What are the real market prices of these materials (cobalt, nickel, aluminum, etc.)? Then you will find that the raw material value is far lower than imagined; it's just that no one has calculated this or restructured this pathway.

True innovation should not just be about "rephrasing the knowledge", but starting from the ground up to overturn old understandings.