Did you really have to come up with a name for it: "reasoning from first principles"? Does it not bother anyone else that this is just "thinking"? I mean, if you can deal with the cost of re-engineering the battery, then why not? Is this not common sense?

And Test driven development is really just "Development"... why did they need to make a name for that?

I think what Musk is trying to do here is provide structure, and intention to the WAY he thinks.

Reasoning by analogy is also "thinking". What's wrong with giving different names to different ways of approaching a problem?

Because it formalizes thought and encourages people to use templates rather than actually thinking about it themselves. If you're "solving problems" by always referring to your sheet of "problem solving approaches", then you're doing it wrong. You might still be successful in solving a problem, but you've effectively turned yourself into a robot.

Anyone operating in a template-driven manner is not reasoning by first principles. I'm not sure what legs your argument has, we might as well say that speaking an existing language like English, French, or German makes us robots by forcing us to communicate within a well-defined and rigorous communication structure.

The fallacy of an individual with regards to reasoning is not a function of the fact that methods of reasoning are identified - they are failures of the individual to effectively apply their own creativity. Don't blame the linguistic constructs.

"Anyone operating in a template-driven manner is not reasoning by first principles."

I'm saying that when you want to solve a problem, you don't use a checklist of which "reasoning from first principles" is an item. "reasoning from first principles" would be the template. It's an approach that someone spoonfed you. There is no contradiction here because we're speaking about the type of approach, not the particular sequence of steps you use to arrive at the solution. Of course you can be creative with these steps once you know the type of approach you're taking.

"I'm not sure what legs your argument has, we might as well say that speaking an existing language like English, French, or German makes us robots by forcing us to communicate within a well-defined and rigorous communication structure."

Natural language is well-defined and rigorous? That's not true.

"The fallacy of an individual with regards to reasoning is not a function of the fact that methods of reasoning are identified"

I don't care that it's labeled, per se, as long as people are discouraged to act like I mentioned. If the act of identifying and labeling thought patterns promotes laziness, then I am justified in being against it. But anyway, that's an empirical claim and you haven't provided any real reason for why you think it's false.

It's a more-specific form, used to distinguish a particular method.

Some people are very good at chess. Similar idea. Are these people also good at math?

"One thing that worked well for my wife was a series of games from Nintendo called Fire Emblem."

So are you trying to make a scientific claim? This is starting to seem like an anecdote supporting brain training games.

No, that isn't remotely his claim.

What happened with his wife was that she became motivated to learn number crunching. The game provided or increased a motivation to become comfortable working with numbers. That's all that happened.

Brain training has nothing to do with learning math. It just uses arithmetic the same way cross training uses a mountain trail.

What are you even arguing about?

There are a lot of feel good nonsense posts in this thread. The parent gave no indication he was referring to motivation. It sounded like he was saying his wife suddenly became better at whatever he considers math to be by just playing a video game. That's basically claiming that brain training works. I may have a slightly different definition of "brain training", but it doesn't really matter because it's just as unscientific. There is no evidence to support the idea that playing video games somehow makes you better at "math" (where "math" is referring to those activities that require deductive thought and understanding of mathematical structures, not number crunching).

Not even so much "brain training works" as "practice makes perfect". It was a fun way to practice, and I thought it might be helpful for other people looking for a way to brush up on the basics.

She's practicing number crunching and maybe some other cognitive tasks that probably can't be related to mathematical thought, unless you squint really hard. I can identify at least one cognitive task: holding configurations in your head (I have played Fire Emblem). From my experience, I would say that this has nothing to do with the type of thought that goes into mathematics. Like I said in my first post: good chess players can do this well. Does that mean good chess players are also good at some part of math?

And, you know, one would have to show that there is some "mathematical thought" that can be trained to begin with. I'm not entirely sure there is.

I don't disagree that "practice makes perfect". I disagree with the statement "practice in fire emblem makes perfect in math (not number crunching)".

People want to share stories. I get it. But if we're not being rigorous about it, then we're just fooling ourselves. And then the conversation devolves into a circlejerk where everyone thinks they're brilliant.

We were all newbies once, and newbies have to start somewhere, even if it is not the most "pure" of beginnings. The kind of proof-snobbery you're displaying here likely bears a large part of the blame for driving people away from math in the first place.

Yes, there is more to math than number-crunching, but to claim that number-crunching is not math is to forget the very roots of the discipline. This is where it begins, and it's where people who have been out of practice for a while return. Give it some respect.

Except... just because you haven't observed it doesn't mean it isn't true. And just because you believe you're gifted doesn't mean you are. It's really easy to be a big fish in a small pond. It's also possible to think you're a big fish in a big pond when you swim in a pack with smaller fish.

edit: I just realized you said high school.

I also put "gifted" in quotes for similar reasons.

I picked high school though because most of the comparisons about being "bad at math" start around then. The reality is that I just put in more work than many people and was a class or two ahead of the average student up through the start of university, where I went on to study math (and was at a similar starting point with most other math majors at my particular school).

At the end of the day, I'm just an average fish in the math pond, but it's easy to think you're not as good if you don't see the work backing my talent in high school and base your comparisons for life on that (or even the first year of undergrad).

I get the impression that the priority, among a large crowd here, is to say profound things rather than true things.

So does the author deny the existence of any sort of domain where these paradigms would be "right"? Or are they universally "wrong"? Also, he states a view or philosophy: "everything is an object" and then he says "this is wrong because I disagree. functions are not objects". Wow. If you remove the commentary about scala and python, which is irrelevant to his philosophical thesis, then what is his argument? And why is it not a matter of just having a different definition?

The message in the book, based on my understanding from online reviews and summaries, resonates with me. I usually have a hard time with school and I've found that if I study on my own, under my own control, and that I get an opportunity to figure things out when I need or want to, I will usually do well when the material is formally taught. University doesn't really offer this for me because there's always a necessity to progress.

As mentioned in my other comments, I am quite similar in this approach. I've never done 'academically well' after high school but this is the exact approach I use to gain whatever knowledge I need for mental stimulation/curiosity/to get the job done.

Where I live, however there's a strong emphasis on degrees - the brand value of your institution defines you unless you prove otherwise, a chance which is rarely given and even more rarely chosen (due to personal reasons I guess - family, finances, general need for stability etc).

Degrees do work well for some people however, and I really respect the students who manage to make the most out of university education and the experience.

I guess the issue just comes down to scalability again, and people like you and I are not the masses (in this context).

I'm actually interested to know more about how exactly you go about learning something - would love to share ideas! [Email and Twitter in my profile]

Depends on how motivated she is to learn (or how good of a teacher you are). If you expose too much complexity in the very beginning, you may risk her not liking it from an early age.

I can come up with one idea which would have been super fun for me as a kid (game AI with python, look at Berkeley CS188). But I would have needed a lot of direction. And maybe that idea is overrrkilll.

There are also some flash games which let you do things like programming. But it may not be fun and it exposes no complexity.

There's also this sort of thing: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scratch_(programming_language)

I have no experience with it and I can't say whether a kid would find it fun.

Who cares? Why does this matter at all? Are you seriously that confused over the abbreviation?

Think about the consequences. In the example conversation, they were simply describing the progress of another employee. Is this person telling you to do something? Not really. Is this person telling you how to think about something technical? Not really.

Dude, look the example conversation in the article. Really look at it. There is an obvious difference between somebody nitpicking the language you use in a social situation (the example conversation in the article) and somebody being thorough and rigorous with technical details (you, your examples). I'm almost positive that nobody, including the author, would be dismissive the latter behavior. And I'm almost positive that even you would be dismissive of former.