First-principles thinking is uncomfortable because it transfers responsibility — analogy outsources blame to 'best practices'

The author reframes resistance to first-principles thinking as an accountability problem rather than a cognitive one: “First principles thinking is uncomfortable because it makes you responsible. When you reason by analogy, you have an excuse. ‘I did what everyone said to do. I followed best practices. Not my fault.’ When you reason from first principles, you own the outcome. You questioned the assumptions. You made the call. Most people don’t want that responsibility. Easier to follow the template and blame the template when things go wrong.”

The implication is that the institutional preference for “best practices” is partly a blame-shifting mechanism, not just an efficiency one. It connects to A latticework of mental models beats isolated facts for real understanding — Munger’s distinction between people whose mental models are “fundamental” versus “copies of copies” maps onto who has done the work to own their conclusions versus who is renting authority from the consensus. The author also concedes the cost honestly: “The process is uncomfortable… It makes you feel stupid. You realize how much of what you ‘know’ you don’t actually know.” That discomfort is the marker that the work is happening — and the same reason it pairs with Reasoning by analogy has a ceiling — you can never get beyond what already exists by copying what already exists: the people who build genuinely new things accept the responsibility tax in exchange for the ability to see past what already exists.