First Principles Thinking Expressed As Distillation Into a Latent Space

“To think from first principles
you must first
return to retard.”

• Yacine

First Principles Thinking Expressed As A Latent Space

1. The compression step is the most important thing
2. In the latent space you’ve derived an idea down to its essence and most basic form
3. Now, it’s easy to reason about it and see how it fits into everything else
4. The generative step is how you expand your first principles insights into new ideas or useful applications
5. This blog post is an example of this process
6. Give examples of this process, maybe the Jevons post

Structure:

1. Summarize latent space from AI perpsective
2. You need to compress to operate on ideas
3. Compression makes you get to the essense of an idea
4. In the most simple state, it’s easier to compare to other ideas
5. Generative / decompression step lets you expand out your insights to the entire world
6. Examples (blog posts, Jevons paradox & learning rate, space, etc.)

“And over a long enough time scale, we can generate blog posts and books, both of which can embody compressed intelligence and a much higher signal to noise ratio than an average conversation.” https://caseyhandmer.wordpress.com/2025/05/21/questions-about-ai-2025/