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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: February 4th, 2025

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  • I think the article had a couple of good examples of how to use an AI.

    Ask for hints, not answers: People who ask AI to directly answer their questions suffer severe declines in motivation and ability. But people who ask AI for background thinking or clarifications do not.

    Start with a blank page: Before you go to the bot, start with a blank piece of paper and write up your own analysis and conclusions. Then ask AI to challenge your thinking, not produce it.

    Ask for thinkers, not thinking: My favorite trick when using Claude is to never ask it to think through a problem for me. I ask it to summarize the thinkers who have already addressed a given problem. If I’m trying to understand child development, I ask it to imagine a debate between Jean Piaget and Erik Erikson. What would these two great psychologists say to each other about the problem I’m wrestling with? Then I ask it what books by these thinkers I should read if I want to understand their work. I get much better results from AI when I treat it as a brilliant librarian rather than as an oracle.