Zero-th Principles

You’ve probably heard me yap on about first principles.

These are the building blocks of any topic.

• Understand first principles

• Understand how they go together

• Understand what they make

If you don’t know what makes something, you don’t truly understand that something.

It’s why for the most part I’m here to teach you those first principles, so you can learn to program, to grow, so you can think.

Zero-th principles are something completely different.

I’ve been looking for these my entire life.

I didn’t make this term… it’s stolen from Bryan Johnson

But it’s the perfect way to describe something unknown.

Let’s pretend I’m researching evolution.

All I need to identify is what’s in the middle.

I know what came before, I know what surrounds it.

I can rationalise why.

I know what I’m looking for.

This is because I have the first principles required to put the pieces together.

Now let’s pretend I’m a quantum physicist.

The smallest thing we understand are quantum level particles.

If I want to learn what is under, as difficult as this is, it’s actually quite simple.

I know what comes above.

I can probably verify it using what’s above.

I might have to take a few shots in the dark but at least my understanding of how things work can help.

This is how first principles are found.

Zero-th principles are a whole different breed.

Unfortunately, I doubt I’ll discover one.

People spend their entire lives dedicated to finding these.

When a field of research expands it’s quite slow. You have pieces, you run tests, you grow what you understand.

You’re using what you have to push forward.

Then out of nowhere, you see something, do something, for no reason. Just for the sake of it.

The entire world changes over night. A new field of research is made.

Finding Zero-th principles is like discovering an island in the middle of the Ocean just by pure chance whilst everyone else is exploring a completely different island.

You shouldn’t have known where to look because you didn’t know where it was, and yet you found it.

• Discovering fire. this led to thermodynamics, chemistry, etc. questioning why from this one discovery

• Discovering magnets. observing loadstones and magnetic fields led to huge understandings in electrical engineering and physics

• Discovering gravity. led to the understanding that objects had force helping us understand mechanics and relativity

• Discovering cross breeding. led to us being able to learn about dna by asking why plants can be altered and traits shared

• Discovering heliocentrism. led to us being able to understand the universe you live in

These were pretty much shot in the darks.

Random questions from observations that no one had observed or put together.

They made no sense.

It was through this trial of everything that Zero-th principles were found.

All a Zero-th principle is, is a first principle with no first principles leading to it.

It’s a miraculous discovery that lights up darkness in a random place and allows us to continue exploring the universe.

Your Hypertrophy Hero,
Fletcher