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Three college students used first principles to design a purely mechanical hearing aid costing only $19.99. Customized via AI and 3D printing, it requires no battery or circuitry, and has the potential to make hearing assistance affordable for hundreds of millions worldwide.
The author criticizes the ease of using high-level libraries like PyTorch without understanding underlying mechanics, recommending Simon J.D. Prince's notebooks to bridge the gap between syntax and first-principles engineering.
A personal reflection on first principles thinking versus reasoning by analogy, using examples from Elon Musk's approach to reducing rocket costs at SpaceX, and the author's own startup failure.