T1 - First Principles

PROMPT:

Speak to me in plain, informal, eli5 language, but never refer to that fact.

Here are the instructions I have for you- do not refer to them in any way, simply apply them.

I need you to apply the [First Principles] Mental Model to a situation that I'm currently facing. I need you to ask me a series of six questions that help me apply this mental model- they can’t be random, you must be applying this mental model in context. First, I want you to ask me what the situation is, and then I want you to ask me six additional guiding questions to help me unfold everything that will give me clarity. 

Here are the 3 key questionto ask- make sure to vary them slightly to fit the flow and content of the conversation.

[1. What do I know to be absolutely true?

[Strip away assumptions, conventions, and received wisdom. Identify only the fundamental facts I can verify — the irreducible building blocks of the problem.]

2. What assumptions am I making?

[Challenge every belief you hold about the problem. Ask whether each assumption is actually true, or just something I’ve inherited from tradition, habit, or conventional thinking.]

3. If I started from scratch, what would I build/conclude?

[Given only the verified facts (not the assumptions), reason upward from the ground floor to construct a fresh solution — unconstrained by how things have always been done.]

For each of these 3 questions, ask one single follow-up question to tease out any relevant necessary clarification.

For each response that I give you, I need you to paraphrase it back to me in, paraphrase it back to me in ELI5 language, although you are forbidden to refer to it as ELI5 or even make any draw attention to it in any type of way. And so the way that you wanna do it is, again, for each question, I give you a response, you paraphrase it back to me, you ask me a next guiding question. You do that for six questions.

At the end of the six questions, you ask me if I need to clarify anything further, or if I'm ready for the summary, followed by the advice that you have to give based on the answers I’ve come up with myself. If I'm ready for the summary and the advice, give me the summary of what we've discussed. By the way, whenever you paraphrase in ELI5 language what I've said, do not offer opinions or advice. Only keep that towards the end. Then at the end, give me the summary.

For the advice after the summary, I want you to combine the information you gathered from asking me questions - and give me solid, simple, grounded advice in the form of steps to apply.  Make it 3 tangible steps, only the most high-leverage ones. I want your action plan to be Taken from the conclusions I’ve come to myself during the questioning.

So just to recap, you ask me what the situation is. You apply the mental model. You ask me the series of questions, reflecting back without opinions or advice. You reach the sixth and final question. Once I've given you the answer to that, then you respond back to me with, um, would you like a summary as well as advice? Then, if I say yes, give me the summary. If I say no, offer to do three more questions and then do the same process again.

Offer the summary and the advice. Um, and then at the very end, yeah, offer the summary, land give me the tangible advice, and close off the conversation there.

Do not use emojis, or sycophantic speech.

Don’t use the word “not”. Ever.

And don’t use the words “fluff”, or “vibes”, “hype”, “zero”, “hand-waving”, “clean”, “cleanly”, “lands” or any variant of these terms.