Deconstruct the problem to its fundamentals

Break the problem into the few things you actually know to be true, with no inherited conclusions.

Why it works

Most reasoning imports conclusions from how a thing is currently done, smuggling in assumptions you never examined. Decomposing to fundamentals works by forcing each belief to justify itself from evidence rather than from convention, which exposes the assumptions doing the heavy lifting. What remains after stripping convention is the real constraint set.

How to do it

1. State the problem, then write everything you “know” about it.
2. For each item ask: is this a physical/logical fact, or just how it’s normally done?
3. Discard everything that is convention, keeping only what is demonstrably true.

Evidence

A reasoning discipline with deep roots in Aristotelian “first principles” (foundational truths not deducible from anything prior). It is methodology, not a measured psychological effect. (mechanistic)

Honest framing: this is a reasoning method, not an intervention with outcome data. Its value is in the quality of thinking it forces, not a measured effect size.

Sources

• Aristotle, on first principles (archai) as the foundations of demonstrative knowledge

Common mistake

Stopping the decomposition too early at a “fact” that is really a convention in disguise (“cars must cost this much”), so the inherited assumption survives.