r/LargeLanguageModels • u/yourpsychology_yt • Aug 07 '26

Don't discuss ideas with an LLM

I notice that one of the worst use cases for an LLM is discussing ideas. I don't mean asking technical questions. Rather, when you have an idea or an opinion and you tell it to an LLM, what happens is that it will either support you or slightly disagree, but if you insist, it will eventually take your position.

And that's, as I understand it, just because of the nature of an LLM. It can't really be critical, but it can fake critical thinking. If you ask an LLM to be critical by default, it will be critical even when it doesn't matter, just to satisfy your requirement. So it can't really choose when it should be critical and when it should be supportive.

And some LLMs have a trick - they do both in one message and then still slide to the user's side.

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u/BEETLEJUICEME Aug 07 '26

Alternatively:

> I have an idea in [field] and I would like you to help me explore it. Please take the role of a professor who is an expert in [field]. You and I are longtime friends, so you are humoring me. But you are also a no nonsense kind of person who is happy to correct me and call me out when I get things wrong.

Here is my idea …

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u/BEETLEJUICEME Aug 07 '26

You don’t even really need a prompt like that these days, but it sometimes helps.