munger and godbolt rules for explaining the world
You can never make any explanation that can be made in a more fundamental way in any other way than the most fundamental way. ... You’ve got to know all the big ideas in all the disciplines more fundamental than your own
~ charlie munger, poor charlies almanack book
in the book, charlie uses insights from psychology to explain how one casino slot machine can be made more popular: you leave the "misses" rate fixed, but increase the amount of "near misses" of the slot machines. "ah, just a single cherry was missing for the jackpot" and so on. crude microeconomic models would predict all slot machines to have the same popularity, as all slot machines have the same amount of "misses", therefore the same expected economic value. charlie, however, considers psychology to be more fundamental than microeconomics.
munger's rule has explanatory power bottom up - start from the fundamental disciplines and build up. in complex systems such as software, a different rule might have better explanatory power. program code is built like a cake with layer upon layer upon layer of abstractions and concepts. the problem to be solved or explained is not always at the most fundamental layer. in these cases, it can make sense to purchase explanatory power by working top-down:
☺️You should know your layer well, but you should also know one layer below it a little bit, and you definitely need to know the shape of the layer that’s beneath that.