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Comment by ventana | Hacker News Reader

One of the ways not to get LMGTFY / Ask Claude as a response is to provide more information and proof of work when asking a question.

Compare:

— What's the best way of doing X?

— Ask Claude.

vs:

— I thought about this and found there are options A, B, and C of doing X, I like A more but C is the fastest; what do you think?

I believe a normal senior engineer won't suggest to talk to Claude in this case.

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— I thought about this and found there are options A, B, and C of doing X, I like A more but C is the fastest; what do you think?

— Ask Claude.

Its a way to say I don't care, don't waste my time

Which is funny because a huge number of people post this in responses to online asynchronous messages, on public forums, when they could also do literally anything else - like close the browser tab.

Intelligence is outsourced so now people who don't like to think they don't have to do it anymore.

Wellll lots of those people you’re referring to are human, and when have we ever let it be?!

That's the malevolent version of it. The alternative might be, I also don't know this from the top of my head and could spend some time to google/ask Claude/read the documentation/familiarize myself with the concrete code and/or problem at hand, but then again so can you and our collective time is better spent if I take care of my problems and you take care of yours, but if you really can't find a solution on your own and still need help please come back to me any time with a very concrete question you need my input on.

Or, in shorter words: "I don't care, stop wasting my time"

I get those kinds of question all the time ("I like A more but C is the fastest; what do you think?"), but when I don't care or don't know, I prefer to say this directly:

"I am not very familiar with this area of the code, so I can't really answer"

"I'd need to do some research for that, but sadly I am pretty busy. But I like simple solutions, it would be nice to do this without yet another microservice of possible"

Just saying "Ask Claude" seems pretty rude.

Well, it’s fucking annoying. When I’m asking a question and I put time into understanding the context and problem space, and already did some analysis with AI, I’m looking for a human opinion. I want my colleagues who know stuff to use their experience and their brain for a second to help the team.

I don’t need Claude to give a second opinion on something that Claude already ran through. It’s fucking useless and it’s a huge blind spot.

This shit happens when everyone in an organization is expected to use Claude to answer questions and do the initial investigation / analysis. Yeah, I did that. Now let’s get to work as humans and provide our expertise, and not turn it into an AI circle jerk.

This exchange sounds like "eff you". I would much rather hear "I don't have opinion" or "I don't know". A person asked you, because they are interested in your opinion. You dont have duty to provide it, but you can just say that without being jerk.

I’m assuming this person did ask in the second way, it’s hard to imagine someone working through a problem that has already tried a bunch of stuff just going in cold and not providing any context and saying “How do I do X?”

Good advice obviously if it’s not being followed already but also likely over-simplifying the problem. Also a normal person on the receiving end would probe a bit about what has already been tried. Which to be fair makes the whole thing a bit weird and does sound more like she’s being brushed off.

It's highly unlikely that the conversation actually happened as reported. At the very least, something was said after "Ask Claude".

Yes, the importance of asking a question to demonstrate you've invested effort cannot be overstated.

Without knowing what/how they asked, it's difficult but I would be tempted to suspect this was actually a way to say "please stop asking me questions"

I lost track how many times I heard or read "I asked Claude to do X. It seems to work".

Anyone who recommends to ask an LLM in the first situation will do so in the second because they're a shit engineer.

"Ask the LLM" is not at all a valid answer in a professional context where part of your job is to educate the less experienced, no matter how little effort is put in the question.

Sometimes part of the education is teaching people how to ask better questions, and that they need to do their research before asking you

"How To Ask Questions The Smart Way" by Eric S. Raymond and Rick Moen is from before AI but still seems relevant.

(HTTP) http://linuxmafia.com/faq/Essays/smart-questions.html

https://archive.ph/duRkf

Latest version: <http://catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html>

Yes, fully agree. "Ask an LLM" does not achieve that.

Agreed, you can also preface the question. I've checked A, B, and C with AI, curious to get your opinion/thoughts?

I don't think anyone in any industry regardless of seniority would redirect you back to AI assuming you're having a genuine conversation.

And yet, here we are. :)

It's highly unlikely that the conversation actually happened as reported. At the very least, something was said after "Ask Claude".

LMGTFY for you was infuriating because it was 100% of the top Google responses to specific searches.

Generally I didn't unleash one of those without already being extremely certain that what they needed would be a top result.

However, search has become enshittified, and I don't think LLM chatbots have achieved a similar level of certainty, so it may just be the end of an era for me.

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