Principles
What truths guide your interpretation of reality?
First principles are bedrock — truths that can't be deduced from other propositions. The primitives layer of the knowledge stack. Principles serve your navigation system — start there to learn the method, then follow the links to where principles are applied.
Pure Science
These three domains stay here because they are theoria — inquiry into truth through observation, measurement, and proof.
- Physics — Conservation, entropy, equilibrium, inertia, leverage, feedback loops
- Biology — Natural selection, emergence, homeostasis, antifragility
- Mathematics — Power laws, compounding, probability, network effects
Applied Elsewhere
Principles that serve specific domains live in those domains:
| Domain | Where | What |
|---|---|---|
| Self-knowledge | Agency First Principles | Psychology, philosophy, foundations, goodwill |
| Business | Business First Principles | 15 principles by lifecycle |
| Forces | Crypto First Principles | Money, data, energy, stories |
| Crypto | Crypto Principles | Composability, SSI, permissionless |
Principles are the second layer of the Knowledge Stack. They become protocols when sequenced, standards when adopted, and capabilities when internalized by an agent.
Context
- First Principles Thinking — The reasoning method
- Navigation System — Value, Belief, Control as the three loops
- Problem Solving — Where principles meet decisions
- Standards — Proven protocols that scale from principles
- Performance — The open ledger: expected vs actual
- Tight Five — Principles as Question #2
- The Greatest Game — Why principles require something machines cannot provide
Questions
What truth about reality do you treat as settled that you've never actually tested?
- Which scientific principle do you intellectually know but fail to apply when it matters?
- Where are you reasoning by analogy when first principles would reveal a different answer?