Transcription
And then, uh, I think it's also important to reason from first principles rather than by analogy. So, the normal way that we conduct our lives is, we, we, we, we reason by analogy. Um, it's, we're doing this because it's like something else that was done, or it's like what, um, other people are doing. Me too type ideas. Yeah. SL, yeah, slight iterations on, on, on a theme. Um, and, and, uh, and it's because it's, it's kind of mentally easier to reason by analogy rather than from first principles. But by first principles is kind of a physics way of looking at the world. And what that really means is you kind of boil things down to the most fundamental truths and, and say, okay, what do we sure as true, or, or as sure as possible, is true, and then reason up from there. Uh, that takes a lot more mental energy.
Um, give me an example of that. Like, what's one thing that you've, you've done that on that you feel works for you?
Sure. So, um, somebody could say, um, in fact, people do, uh, that battery packs are really expensive, and that's just the way they will always be, 'cause that's the way they've been in the past. Um, you're like, well, no, that's, that's pretty dumb, you know, because if, if, uh, you applied that reasoning to anything new, then you wouldn't be able to, to ever get to that new thing, right? Um, so, um, you know, it's like you can't say, oh, you know, horses, nobody wants a car because horses are great, and we're used to them, and they can eat grass, and there's lots of grass all over the place, and, you know, there's not like a, there's no gasoline that people can buy, so people are never going to, never get, never going to get cars, right? Um, people did say that, you know. Um, and, and for batteries, they would say, oh, it's going to cost, you know, historically, it's cost $600 per, $600, um, uh, per kilowatt hour, and so it's not going to be much better than that in the future. And you say, no, okay, what, what, what are the batteries made of? So, so first principles would be, say, okay, what are the material constituents of the batteries? What is the spot market value of the material constituents? So you can say, okay, it's got cobalt, nickel, aluminum, carbon, um, and some polymers for separation, and a steel can. So break that down on a material basis and say, okay, what if we bought that in London Metal Exchange? What would each of those things cost? Like, oh, jeez, uh, it's like $80, uh, per kilowatt hour. Mhm. So clearly, you just need to think of clever ways to take those materials and combine them into the shape of a battery cell, and you can have batteries that are much, much cheaper than anyone realizes.