Working with LLMs

Rene Descartes was a French philosopher who wrote a treatise "Discourse on methods" in 1637. Nearly four hundred years ago. He listed several principles of reasoning. I found them to very effective for working with LLMs. All the prompt guides can dedcuced from those principles. I will note down the most important principles

Please note text in bold are verbatim copy from his book otherwise it will seem as if they are from some prompt guide

1. The first was never to accept anything for true which I did not clearly know to be such; that is to say, carefully to avoid precipitancy and prejudice, and to comprise nothing more in my judgement than what was presented to my mind so clearly and distinctly as to exclude all ground of doubt.

2 The second, to divide each of the difficulties under examination into as many parts as possible, and as might be necessary for its adequate solution.

3.  The third, to conduct my thoughts in such order that, by commencing with objects the simplest and easiest to know, I might ascend by little and little, and, as it were, step by step, to the knowledge of the more complex; assigning in thought a certain order even to those objects which in their own nature do not stand in a relation of antecedence and sequence.

4.  And the last, in every case to make enumerations so complete, and reviews so general, that I might be assured that nothing was omitted.

5. there is nothing so far removed from us as to be beyond our reach, or so hidden that we cannot discover it, provided only we abstain from accepting the false for the true, and always preserve in our thoughts the order necessary for the deduction of one truth from another.

Few days back OpenAi published it's prompt guide 
https://platform.openai.com/docs/guides/prompt-engineering/six-strategies-for-getting-better-results

If we read the guide they surprisingly are related to one or more of above principles. In simple terms divide your problems into smaller steps. And ask LLMs questions about the smaller steps.

More complete your questions. Better will be the answer of LLMs. Avoid asking ambiguous questions. And lastly be careful about hallucinations of LLMs.

As intelligence of LLMs keep on increasing, your memorization skills or knowing the right answers will not set you apart. 

What will set you apart how much you can get it done by working together with LLMs by asking the right questions. 

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