How Elon Musk solves problems: First principles thinking explained | Lex Fridman Podcast Clips

can you uh then Zoom back in to specific problems with Starship or any engineering problems you work on can you try to introspect your particular biological new network your thinking process and describe how you think through problems through different engineering and design problems is there like a systematic process youve spoken about first principles thinking but is there kind of process to it well um you like saying like like physics is the law and everything else is a recommendation um like I've met a lot of people who can break the law but I haven't met anyone

who could break physics so uh so the first for you know any kind of Technology problem you have to sort of just make sure you're not violating physics um and you know uh first principles analysis I think is something that can be applied to really any Walk of Life any anything really it's just it's it's really just saying um you know let's let's boil something down to the most fundamental uh principles the things that we are most confident are true at a foundational level and that sets your your sets your axiomatic base and then you

reason up from there and then you crush check your conclusion against the the axiomatic truths um so um you know some basics in physics would be like oh you violating conservation of energy or momentum or something like that you know then you you're it's not going to work um so uh that's you know so that's just to establish is is it is it possible and then another good physics tool is thinking about things in the limit if you if you take a particular thing and you uh scale it to a very large number or to

a very small number how does how do things change um both like tempor like in number of things you Manu or something like that and then in time yeah like let's say say take an example of like um like manufacturing which I think is just a very underrated problem um and and uh like I said it's it's much harder to take a an advanced technology product and bring it into volume manufacturing than it is to design it in the first place my 's magnitude so um so let's say you're trying to figure out is um

like why is this this uh part or product expensive is it um because of something fundamentally foolish that we're doing or is it because our volume is too low and so then you say okay well what if our volume was a million units a year is it still expensive that's what I mean thinking about things in the limit if it's still expensive at a million units a year then volume is not the reason why your thing is expensive this something fundamental about design and then you then can focus on the reducing complexity or something like

that in the design change the design to change change the part to be something that is uh uh not fundamentally expensive but but like that's a common thing in rock tree because the the unit volume is is relatively low and so a common excuse would be well it's expensive because our unit volume is low um and if we were in like Automotive or something like that or consumer electronics then our cost would be lower I'm like I'm like okay so let's say we SK now you're making a million units a year is it still expensive

if the answer is yes then uh economies of scale are not the issue do you throw into manufacturing do you throw like supply chain you talked about resources and materials and stuff like that do you throw that into the calculation of trying to reason from first principles like how we're going to make the supply chain work here yeah yeah and then the cost of materials things like that or is that too much exactly so um like another like a good example I think of thinking about things uh in the limit is um if you take

any uh you know any any product any machine or whatever um like take a rocket or whatever and say um if you've got if if you look at the raw raw materials in the rocket um so you're going to have like uh I don't know aluminum steel titanium Inc canel uh special specialty Alloys um copper and and you say what are the how what what what's the weight of the constituent elements of of each of these elements and what is their raw material value and that sets the ASM totic limit for how uh low the

cost of the vehicle can be unless you change the the materials so and then when you do that I call it like maybe the magic one number or something like that so that would be like if you had the you know like just a a pile of these raw materials here and you could wave magic wand and rearrange the atoms into the final shape um that would be the low possible cost that you could make this thing for unless you change the materials so then and that is always a US almost always a very low

number um so then the the what's actually causing things to be expensive is how you put the atoms into the desired shape yeah I actually if you don't mind me taking a tiny tangent had uh I often talk to Jim Keller who's somebody to work with you as as a Jim was yeah did great work at Tesla so um I suppose he carries the flame of the same kind of thinking that you're you're talking about now um and I I guess I see that same thing at Tesla and and uh SpaceX folks who work there

they kind of learn this way of thinking and it kind of becomes obvious almost but anyway I had um argument not argument uh he educated me about how cheap it might be to manufacture Tesla bot we just we had an argument what is how can you reduce the cost of scale of producing a robot because so I gotten a chance to interact quite a bit um obviously in in the academic circles with humanoid robots and then moson Dynamics and stuff like that and they're very expensive to to build and then uh Jim kind of schooled

me on saying like Okay like this kind of first principal thinking of how can we get the cost of manufactur down um I suppose you do that you have done uh that kind of thinking for Tesla bot and for all kind of all kinds of complex systems that are traditionally seen as complex and you say okay how can we simplify everything down yeah I I mean I think if you if you are really good at manufacturing you can basically make at high volume you can basically make anything for a cost that ASM totically approaches the

raw raw material value of the constituents plus any intellectual property that you need to license anything right but it's hard it's not like that's a very hard thing to do but but it is possible for anything anything in volume can be made uh like I said for a cost that ASM totically approaches as raw material uh constituents plus intellectual property license rights so what will often happen in trying to design a product is is people will start with the tools and and parts and methods that they are familiar with um and then and try to

create a product using their existing tools and methods um the other way to think about it is uh actually imagine the try to imagine the platonic ideal of the perfect product or technology whatever it might be um and so what is this what what is the perfect arrangement of atoms that would be the the best possible product and now let us try to figure out how to get the atoms in that shape I mean it it sounds um uh it's almost like Rick and Morty absurd until you start to really think about it and it

you really should think about it in this way cuz everything else is kind of uh uh if if you think uh you you might fall victim to the momentum of the way things were done in the past unless you think in this way well just as a function of inertia people will uh want to use the same tools and methods that they are familiar with um they just that's what they'll do by default yeah um and then that that will lead to an outcome of things that can be made with those tools and methods but

is unlikely to be the um platonic ideal of the perfect product um so then so that's why it's it's good to think of things in both directions so like what can we build with the tools that we have but then but but also what is the what does the perfect the theoretical perfect product look like and and that that theoretical perfect product is going to be a moving Target because as you learn more the definition of or for that perfect product will will change CU you don't actually know what the perfect product is but you

can successfully approximate uh a a more perfect product um so the thing about it like that and then saying okay now what tools methods materials whatever do we need to create in order to get the atoms in that shape people very rarely think about it that way but it's a powerful tool for