"that's how it's done"

that's the answer you get when you ask why. why do we do it this way? why does it cost so much? why can't we change it? why is this process so slow? why do we need all these intermediaries? "because that's how it's done." which usually means nobody's questioned it in years. maybe decades. maybe ever. the assumption calcified into truth. the workaround became the standard. the temporary fix became permanent infrastructure. and everyone just... accepted it.

first principles thinking is deceptively simple. keep asking "why" until you hit bedrock. not policy bedrock. not industry standard bedrock. actual bedrock... physics, math, or human nature. the things that can't be argued with. the things that don't care about your opinion. most people never get there. most people reason by analogy. "we should do it this way because that's how company x does it." "this is industry standard." "everyone prices it like this." "that's just what it costs."

analogy is faster. safer. familiar. it lets you skip the hard thinking and borrow someone else's homework. but here's the trap... analogy locks you inside someone else's assumptions. their constraints become your constraints. their limitations become your limitations. their blind spots become yours. and you never even notice.

when elon musk wanted to build cheaper rockets, the aerospace industry laughed. they showed him the numbers. they explained why rockets cost what they cost. they told him it was impossible. decades of precedent said so. so he asked a different question. what is a rocket actually made of? aluminum, titanium, copper, carbon fiber. he priced the raw materials. about 2% of the typical rocket cost. the other 98%? tradition. process. margin. assumption stacked on assumption stacked on "that's how it's done."

he didn't accept the analogy. he went to bedrock. bitcoin did the same thing to money. for centuries we assumed money required trusted intermediaries. banks to hold it. governments to issue it. payment processors to move it. that wasn't physics. that wasn't math. that was just... how it was done. satoshi asked why. kept asking until he hit bedrock. what is money actually? a ledger. a record of who owns what. does that ledger need a bank? no. it needs consensus. does consensus need trust? not if you have math. not if you have cryptography. not if you have proof of work.

2008 wasn't just a financial product. it was first principles applied to the oldest technology humans have... the technology of trust. and the world is still catching up. here's the thing about first principles... it won't guarantee you're right. plenty of first principles thinkers build things that fail. the market doesn't care how clever your reasoning was. but first principles guarantees something more important. it guarantees you're actually thinking. not copying. not assuming. not borrowing. thinking. starting from truth and building up, instead of starting from convention and optimizing sideways.

most "innovation" is just rearranging deck chairs. making the existing thing slightly faster, slightly cheaper, slightly shinier. that's analogy thinking. incremental. safe. forgettable. real breakthroughs come from questioning the chair. questioning the deck. questioning whether you need a ship at all. try it yourself. pick something expensive. something slow. something broken. something everyone complains about but nobody fixes.

ask why. get an answer. ask why again. get another answer. keep going. five whys minimum. strip away the assumptions. remove the "that's how it's done." rebuild from what's actually true. you'll find gaps. massive ones. places where the entire industry is paying a tax on legacy thinking. places where everyone accepted a constraint that isn't actually a constraint. places where the emperor has no clothes and nobody noticed because nobody looked.

you won't always get a breakthrough. sometimes the current way really is optimal. sometimes physics actually is the constraint. that's fine. at least you know. at least you checked. at least you're not just copying someone else's assumptions and calling it strategy. but sometimes... sometimes you'll find the 98%.

the world is full of solutions waiting to be questioned. full of "impossible" waiting to be tested. full of "that's how it's done" waiting for someone stubborn enough to ask why. are you accepting answers... or finding truth?