First principles thinking combined with patteen matching is really good when you are trying to find solutions to problems with limited and known domain boundari

First principles thinking combined with patteen matching is really good when you are trying to find solutions to problems with limited and known domain boundaries: e.g. debugging software, fixing an electronic circuit, etc. Many problems don't have a fixed or even a known domain boundary. If you e.g. apply to an art school as a painter, most of the stuff that can make or break your application is outside of the bounds of what you can know and/or influence. E.g. who else is applying, who will review your application and for how long, what experiences they had with similar students etc. That means you can do everything right and still fail. Same is true for a lot of things.