James Stephen Brown on how analogical reasoning drives innovation beyond first principles
Newton lost millions by ignoring analogies—Brown shows how to think better.
James Stephen Brown’s essay on LessWrong challenges the cult of first-principles thinking by championing analogical reasoning as a practical tool for innovation. He recounts how Isaac Newton, a genius in physics, lost a fortune in the South Sea Bubble because he failed to apply an analogy from his own field: the three-body problem. Just as adding a third gravitational body destroys predictability, adding thousands of human agents makes markets chaotic. Newton’s mistake was trying to reason from scratch instead of using existing structural insights.
Brown argues that analogies compress information by revealing underlying patterns between domains, a skill he cultivates through linked note-taking in Obsidian. He shares personal examples: painting taught him to lay down structure before detail, which he applies to filmmaking and blog writing; storytelling techniques from film improve his parenting communication. He contends this method is not limited to polymaths—anyone can train their intuitive “resonance” to spot connections. In an age of hyper-specialization and information overload, analogical thinking provides a protective sense-check and a path to original ideas.
- Newton lost £20,000 in the South Sea Bubble because he ignored his own three-body problem analogy predicting market chaos.
- Brown uses Obsidian to deliberately link notes, finding unexpected connections that become blog post topics.
- He advocates analogies as 'information compression'—understanding structure without memorizing every detail.
Why It Matters
Shows how cross-domain analogies can prevent costly mistakes and unlock creative insights for any professional.