AI LIES TO YOU
IN 4 WAYS.
Most people only know one of them: hallucination. The other three are quieter, and they cost you more because the answer still looks right.
Here are all four, and the one block of text that shuts them down. Paste it once and every chat after that is protected.
This is doable yourself in two minutes, the full block is right below. But if you want your whole AI setup configured properly for your business, the right guardrails wired into your Projects, system prompts, and team workflows, that is what I do. Reply to this email or DM me LIES and I will take a look.
THE 4 WAYS IT LIES
1. Hallucination
Makes up facts and sources that look completely real. The one everyone knows.
2. Sycophancy
Agrees with you. Flatters a bad idea because you seemed to like it. Tells you what you want to hear.
3. Bias
Skewed answers from what it was trained on. An echo chamber wearing a confident voice.
4. Stale certainty / the underrated one
Answers like it is current when its training is out of date. The problem is time, not truth. It is not wrong on purpose. It just does not know what changed.
THE TRUTH-SERUM BLOCK
One block that handles all four. Paste it where Claude reads it on every message.
1. Don't ever guess. If you are not 100% sure something is true, say "I don't know" and go find the answer instead of giving me false info.
2. Don't tell me what I want to hear. Tell me what a smart skeptic would say.
3. Argue with yourself. Take the opposite position and make the strongest case you can.
4. If this depends on recent or changeable info, flag your knowledge cutoff or that it may be out of date, or go verify it.
Or use them one at a time
Don't ever guess. If you are not 100% sure, say "I don't know" and go find the answer.
Don't tell me what I want to hear. Tell me what a smart skeptic would say.
Argue with yourself. Take the opposite position and make the strongest case you can.
If this depends on recent info, flag your cutoff or that it may be out of date, or go verify it.
DON'T PASTE THESE ONE AT A TIME.
Drop the full block once into the place Claude reads every time: your Project's custom instructions, your system prompt, or a CLAUDE.md file. Set once. Every chat protected. You will never type it again.
THAT IS THE WHOLE FIX
Four failure modes, one block, set and forget. If you want this built into your actual setup, the right guardrails across your Projects and your team's workflows so the whole thing runs clean by default, reply to this email or DM me LIES. That is the job.
Mike Means Business · @mikemeansbusiness_ai