What is the difference between First Principles Thinking and Analogical Reasoning?

Let's put it this way: these two concepts are essentially two different "problem-solving operating systems" in our brains.

"Analogical thinking" is like "copying homework."

When you encounter a problem, your first reaction is: Has anyone encountered a similar problem before? How did they solve it? For example, if you want to open a bubble tea shop. You'd look at which bubble tea shops are popular, how they're decorated, what's on their menu, and how they do marketing. Then you'd learn from them, open a similar one, perhaps making minor optimizations, like adding one or two new flavors, or making the packaging more appealing. This is analogical thinking. Its core is "imitation, comparison, and fine-tuning." Most of the time, this approach works very well because it's fast, low-risk, and allows you to quickly keep up and not fall behind. 99% of our decisions in life and work are based on analogy.

"First principles thinking" is like "deriving the formulas yourself."

You completely ignore how others "did their homework." You break the problem down into its most basic, unshakeable elements, just like disassembling a computer into its raw silicon, metal, and plastic. Then you ask yourself: What objective laws do these most fundamental things follow? (e.g., laws of physics, human needs). Finally, starting from these most fundamental laws, you rigorously reassemble them step by step to see what new thing you can build.

Let's take the bubble tea shop example again. Using first principles, you might ask:

1. Why do people drink bubble tea? What are the fundamental needs? – Quenching thirst? Socializing? The pleasure of sugar? Or seeking a sense of "small happiness" (a small, certain happiness)?
2. What is the essence of a "beverage"? – Liquid + flavor substances + temperature.
3. Does "flavor" have to come from tea and milk? – Not necessarily; it could be any edible combination that provides a pleasant taste.
4. Is a "shop" essential? – Not necessarily; as long as the product can be delivered to the user.

Starting from these essential questions, you might end up creating something that is completely unlike a "bubble tea shop." Perhaps it's a subscription-based healthy flavored water brand delivered by drones; perhaps it's a social space where users DIY their own flavors. You're not "optimizing" a cup of bubble tea; you're "reinventing" a solution to meet people's fundamental needs. Elon Musk building rockets is a classic example; he didn't think about how to make existing rockets cheaper (analogy), but rather calculated how much the basic raw materials (metal, fuel, etc.) for a rocket actually cost (first principles), found the cost to be extremely low, and then built it from scratch himself.

To summarize:

• Analogical thinking looks horizontally, at others; it's an "optimization from 1 to N" process. It helps you run faster in the existing race.
• First principles thinking looks vertically, at the essence; it's a "creation from 0 to 1" process. It gives you the opportunity to switch to a completely new race, or even take off directly.

For daily life, "analogical thinking" is usually sufficient; it's effortless. But if you want to do something disruptive and unprecedented, something no one else has thought of, then you need to activate this high-energy mode of "first principles thinking."