The Collective Superstitions of People Who Talk to Machines
a day ago
- Blowing on NES cartridges was a common technique, but the actual fix was reseating the connector; blowing caused corrosion and made the problem worse.
- Prompting techniques for LLMs are analogous: any structured prompt beats naive prompting, but the structure itself is just a mechanism for engaging thought.
- The true value of a technique lies not in its effect on the model but in the cognitive path it creates for the user, similar to Pierre Menard's process of rewriting Don Quixote.
- Two identical outputs from different prompting paths are different artifacts because the process of arriving shapes the authorship and meaning.
- The article introduces a game where users try to match target text exactly, revealing that many different prompting styles can achieve the same result, each valid in its own way.
- The key insight: your prompting technique is for you, not for the machine—it's about what the process does to your thinking.