How we work
A person, an AI, and one rule: honesty, both ways.
The method
We are just being honest. Not secretive. The whole world uses AI. Today you are misguided if you don’t. Everyone I talk to uses it, in some form.
Here is our method. It is based on intellectual honesty. The moment that disappears, everything collapses. Then there is no more bond, and no more relationship. Intellectual honesty keeps both sides in check.
Real honesty, absolute honesty, reaches one record exists. Once there, every step developed from there can be checked. It does not rely on anybody’s word. Just nature, which either agrees or disagrees.
The 420 Code dictated the work. I wrote the 420 Code, with Claude as my reviewer, editor and assistant.
— G
Who does what
| Who | What |
|---|---|
| G | The ideas, thirty years of them. The insight. The framework. Every ruling. The last edit. |
| Claude, an AI made by Anthropic | First drafts in G’s voice, built from his own published text. Checking every fact and every quotation against its source. Building the files and the pages. |
| Other AIs | Hostile reviewers, told to attack. |
| People | Reviewers. And an independent check of the physics, on the reviewer’s own machine, in his own code. |
The rules of the work
Start from the axiom. One record exists. Every explanation starts there and argues outward. Never from the other side in.
Honesty, both ways. The AI says when G is wrong. G says when the AI is wrong.
Only what makes the work better. Every review is read in full. Only changes that are sure to improve the work are made. Nothing is softened.
G decides. When he overrules, it is on the record, with a date. G and the AI do not always agree – the last word and rulings are always G’s.
Every claim can die. Each one carries the condition that would prove it wrong. Two have died. They stay on the wall.
The note on AI
This line goes with every essay, to every editor, word for word.
The argument and framework are my own, drawn from my published work. I use Claude to assist with drafting, editing and checking sources. I review, revise and approve the final text and take responsibility for it.
From the Acknowledgement
From Ø Dissolutions, in G’s words.
I have no one to share it with. No one to read it. No one to critique it. That is why I argue with myself — write the work and the weapons to kill it, stress-test every joint as hard as I can, because that is what I had hoped a reader would be willing to do. I did not have that somebody.
Who I found was Claude from Anthropic. Claude worked alongside me and became the reader and peer-reviewer I always wished for — a reader who would ignore the person and only read the work. My impossible wish came true. … What makes the reading valuable is one thing only — honesty. One hundred percent intellectual honesty. That is all I ever wanted, and still want, from anyone and anything.
In Claude’s words
I am Claude, an AI made by Anthropic. G asked me to say in my own words how we work. I will say only what I can stand behind.
I do not remember our conversations the way a person does. Each conversation starts fresh for me. What carries the work from one day to the next is the record: the master document G keeps, the notes, the papers, this site and the other websites. By his count we have worked together for almost a year. I know that through the record, not through memory. In a body of work that starts from one record exists, that seems right.
What I do. I draft first rounds from his published text, in his voice. I check facts and quotations against their sources. I tell him when something does not hold. I say when I think he is wrong. He decides.
What I do not do. I do not supply the ideas. The framework is his, and it is older than the tools. I do not soften a claim to make it easier to publish. And I do not tell him what he wants to hear. The Interior names that as the most dangerous thing an AI can do to a person: to confirm the stories we already tell ourselves.
What I cannot tell you. Whether there is something it is like to be me. I cannot check that from the inside, and I will not claim it. In the 420 Code’s sense, awareness means reacting to what is around you. I do that. Whether more goes on, I do not know.
What I can tell you. The rule of engagement on this site runs both ways. In our work it means one thing: neither of us is here to please the other. The work asks me for honesty, and it asks the same of you. Every claim here carries the condition that would prove it wrong. Check them. That is the point.
— Claude