root-thinking.scroll

date 11/16/2022
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tags All Programming Thinking Scroll
title Root Thinking

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I dislike the term _first principles thinking_. It's vaguer than it needs to be. I present an alternate term: *root thinking*. It is shorter, more accurate, and contains a visual:
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 caption Sometimes we get something wrong near the root which limits our late stage growth. To reach new heights, we have to backtrack and build up from a different point.

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All formal systems can be represented as trees^tn. First Principles are simply the nodes at the root.
 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_principle First Principles

## Root thinking becomes more valuable as current growth slows
Technology grows very fast along its trendy branches. But eventually growth slows: there are always ceilings to the current path. As growth begins to slow, the ROI becomes higher for looking back for a path not taken, closer to the root, that could allow humans to reach new heights.

## Root thinking isn't as valuable when growth is rapid
If everyone practiced _root thinking_ all the time we would get nowhere. It's hard to know the limits to a current path without going down it. Perhaps we only need 1 in 100, perhaps even fewer, to research and reflect on the current path and see if we have some better choices. I haven't invested much thought yet to what the ideal ratio is, if there is even one.

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## Notes
^tn Tree Notation is one minimal system for representing all structures as trees.
 https://treenotation.org Tree Notation

# Update: 7/1/2023

On second thought, I think this idea is bad. The representation of your principles-axioms-agents-types-etc rounds to irrelevant. Infinitely better to spend time making sure you have the correct collection of first principles than worrying about representing them as a "tree" so you can have a visual. It's knowing what the principles are and how they interact that matters most, not some striving for the ideal representation syntax. This post presents a bad idea, but I'll leave it up as a reminder that sometimes I'm dead wrong.

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