If anyone is interested, here are some of the articles that I wrote that served as inspiration for this post:

Short summary:

https://gainweightjournal.com/a-short-lesson-on-first-principles-thinking/

First long article on Elon Musk's first principles thinking:

https://gainweightjournal.com/how-to-think-like-elon-musk-and-come-up-with-creative-solutions-to-problems/