Any suggestions on how I might validate the answers Claude gives, so that I don’t just waste your time sending a bunch of incorrect attempts?
Here is an attempt using an approach that worked well for things like substitution-ciphers-with-errors—Claude would overthink it and confuse itself, whereas encouraging it to act purely on instinct worked well, and telling it to repeat the question four times allowed it some gut-level thinking space without the kind of structured thinking that led it astray:
https://claude.ai/share/f00ed43b-e26b-4e98-b4f7-9ad77100fac0
(I have zero clue if this is remotely correct)
Here’s an example of the buggy substitution cipher that this approach worked well with, as far back as Sonnet 3.5 (“new”):
https://x.com/Chrisbilbo/status/1884004589453848945
chrisjbillington
Karma: 12
I wonder if one reason SMTM might be advocating improbable theories, and not accepting bets, is because they are intentionally persuing improbable theories. Their post on scurvy seems to make the point that you need to check things even if they seem improbable, as the truth sometimes turns out to be something that seemed improbable.
I (perhaps charitably) assumed they did not believe the lithium theory per se, but thought it was worth a more detailed look—having previously argued that the bar for that should be lower than others think.
I thought the lithium theory and the potato diet were just two of many possible things they might be looking into, with the idea being that they advocate a broader search generally.
Exactly what I was thinking.
Very reasonable.
Interesting challenge, looking forward to the eventual reveal!