I think the most dangerous thing here is the branding of research as something new, that Musk has invented. I worked in academic and industrial research for a number of years, and any work that was worth it's salt typically went back to first principles to make its point.
The problem with this is that it's hard and time it's time consuming to do this. Most companies and people don't have the time to go back to first principles for every product they build, and it would not be financially viable to do so if they did. So we compartmentalise and we make assumptions about the outcome based on prior knowledge to assess the risk of the project.
Software development is illustrative of this point. Let's say you are developing a beautiful front end for your product. You use a toolkit, based upon an existing language, which eventually will get interpreted/compiled down through multiple existing systems and run on the processor of your computer.
If I wanted to go back to first principles and make the whole thing faster, do I optimise my code the language, the compiler, the browser, the os stack, the hardware stack, CPU assembly? No, as I'd no longer be a front end developer.
Research is hard, expensive, and by it's nature, high risk. If Musk can sit on his pile of money and do it, great for him, but for most, going back to first principles for everything is not a viable option.
The problem with this is that it's hard and time it's time consuming to do this. Most companies and people don't have the time to go back to first principles for every product they build, and it would not be financially viable to do so if they did. So we compartmentalise and we make assumptions about the outcome based on prior knowledge to assess the risk of the project.
Software development is illustrative of this point. Let's say you are developing a beautiful front end for your product. You use a toolkit, based upon an existing language, which eventually will get interpreted/compiled down through multiple existing systems and run on the processor of your computer.
If I wanted to go back to first principles and make the whole thing faster, do I optimise my code the language, the compiler, the browser, the os stack, the hardware stack, CPU assembly? No, as I'd no longer be a front end developer.
Research is hard, expensive, and by it's nature, high risk. If Musk can sit on his pile of money and do it, great for him, but for most, going back to first principles for everything is not a viable option.