[ExI] it won't work, but i have a better idea

[Adrian Tymes]

On Fri, Oct 10, 2025 at 10:49 PM spike jones via extropy-chat
<extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
> Turns out that idea was flawed on multiple levels

You have gone on about the power of AI, generally rightfully so.  You
may do well - get the answers you seek faster, or at least good-enough
first-pass answers which may inspire questions that we can give better
answers to - to run these ideas past AIs in the future, specifically
asking them to identify flaws, sharing them if no major ones are found
or the flaws appear to be based on bad takes (or hallucinations or the
like).

For example, I tried giving Claude this prompt.  I won't share the
chat or results, because I wish to try to make you curious enough to
try it yourself. ;)

"A colleague of mine has speculated about a wind farm in New England
that was recently canceled by the federal government after being 80%
completed, suggesting that it may be profitable to tear down the wind
farm and harvest its rare earths.  What flaws can you find in this
proposal, and in the factual understanding of the situation?"

>The environmentalists hate the idea of a windfarm out there off the coast (recall the Life cereal that Mikey liked which was the only exception, for when it comes to power generation environmentalists hate everything.)  The contention is that offshore wind power is bad for whales.  So.  Offshore windfarms are bad for whales.  But why?

That's another good prompt, if you rephase that last bit so you're not
saying something the AI would assume as fact.  Try this instead:

"The environmentalists hate the idea of a windfarm out there off the
coast (recall the Life cereal that Mikey liked which was the only
exception, for when it comes to power generation environmentalists
hate everything.)  The contention is that offshore wind power is bad
for whales.  Are offshore windfarms bad for whales, and if so why?"

Claude's reply, to summarize, was that most of the risks come from the
construction operations rather than from the wind farms themselves,
and that the risks are minor compared to other risks such as from
fishing and pollution.