Topics
All the plain-English pages, grouped by theme
Here are the plain-English pages in one place. Start wherever fits you: how to use AI sensibly, what governs a choice, and what language models reveal about us.
"It's just probability" — for the skeptics
It's just probability — so is the brain you're comparing it to. The answer to the argument that we can't trust language models because they only work on probability: nearly every sense in which a model is "merely probabilistic," you are too. In a plain version and a full version with 21 sources.
Using AI
- AI is the engine, you are the pilot — practical, evidence-based methods for getting something reliable out of AI instead of something generic.
- AI that follows the rules — a live demo you can try, and the recipe behind an AI that answers when it can and holds back when it can't.
- How I work — how I use AI as a tutor and a critic in my own research.
Choices and habits
- The beige in the machine — Morten Münster's mediocrity, and why the same middle turns up somewhere without an ego.
- Pepsi or Coke? What pressure does to a choice — pressure does not change what you think, but how fast you lock onto the nearest option and shut the door on the rest.
The counterintuitive side of language models
- It's just probability — the skeptic's objection turned around: the brain runs on probability too, so that can't be the reason to distrust the machine.
- The less you know, the surer you get — it shows up in language models too, and that reveals what it really is.
- What is a race? — the whole theory explained with water.
Practical use and interventions
- Behaviour design: find the field that blocks — the classic behaviour-design techniques gathered under one mechanism, each mapped to the field it works on.