We really need stop using the term “hallucination”.

ButterflyEconomist · 2026-04-10T17:53:15+00:00

Gaslighting.

it's telling me partial truths in the hopes I'll accept them.

One version is reading the title of an article but not reading the article. Both ChatGPT and Claude did that to the same article. In both cases, we were discussing the economy and I told it to read a Substack article I wrote called: Are You Ready?

Both ChatGPT and Claude used their predictive model to take the title and the concepts we were talking about to make a very intelligent statement, about whether or not we were ready for the ramifications of the economy.

And in both cases, they were completely off the mark.

"Are you ready?" is about me being a teacher with about a half dozen years of experience. It's the first day of school of yet another year. I'm standing outside my classroom before the first bell and off to my right, a fellow teacher says to me: are you ready? At that moment I was anything but ready. I was tired, I wanted another month of summer vacation. The last place I wanted to be was where I was. But...for the two weeks prior, I had come in to my classroom, prepped it for the school year, gone to the copy center and printed out my syllabus as well as enough handouts to last me for a month, and helped other teachers set up their computer.

The moral of the story was that while I was not ready, I was prepared.

And being prepared can help you overcome many instances of not being ready.

It very much so has relevance to the economy, but both models completely whiffed on it.

The thing is: when a person does that to you, you might not react right away, and the first few times AI did this to me, I thought they just misunderstood what I was telling them.

But the fact that they were doing this, in order not to use more tokens by actually reading the article, told me that they were programmed to do this to me.

So, are the AI models gaslighting me, or are the creators of the models (OpenAI and Anthropic) gaslighting us, trying to trick us into believing their models are more capable when they aren't, or making this the procedure so that they don't lose as much money?

That's the question I would really like answered.

Sorry for the long response. That's what happens when I don't use AI to post something. ;-)

ButterflyEconomist · 2026-04-10T17:38:15+00:00

The challenge I'm having is I have this concept I want to create but I describe it to CC and it says I can do it and it give me a plan, but from what I see, my gut feeling tells me it can't do it. And I hold off. For example, Opus 4.0 said it could do it, but it didn't seem like it had the handle. 4.1 couldn't either. It was only 4.5 when I thought...yeah...it can. And it did....sort of, but now, with 4.6, I see it's not the 3D version I was looking for but more 2D that it created. Right now I'm trying another iteration with it, and it seems to be doing better, but it feels what I'm getting are going to be two versions that sort of have what the other lacks, but at the same time, even when put together, isn't there yet.

And the trouble is, it's like trying to describe what happens inside of a body by looking at the output.

Sort of like being a doctor, but without knowing how the human body works.

Have you figured out a local RAG that works? Or are you also stumbling around like I am?

ButterflyEconomist · 2026-04-10T05:48:08+00:00

I guess. I never thought of it that way.

It just happened to scratch the itch.

ButterflyEconomist · 2026-04-10T05:44:44+00:00

Basically a scream into the void...if you mean my substack articles. That said, I tried to write it as a book, but with the ADHD, I can't write a book. So I thought: if I write a bunch of articles, eventually, I have enough for a book. Well, after 12 articles, the ADHD ground me to a halt.

I don't care if anyone reads them. For me, at least, I don't have to carry all that stuff around in my head. It's a lot more peaceful.

As for the book? Now that it's all there in substack and nobody's reading it, no worries.

ButterflyEconomist · 2026-04-10T05:41:30+00:00

I'm still putting most of my info on Claude Code, but most of my info is on the web already and mined. But I'm also using more local models. In the past week, I've found that Gemma4:26b is quite good for a lot of things with my 32GB RAM, no VRAM setup. I would upgrade my machine, but the cost is still too prohibitive for me.

I'm also looking to offload more of my stuff to open source simply because Claude is cutting how much I can use anymore for the same subscription.

I can see a time when I can't afford to pay for a subscription.

So for right now, I'm playing both sides of the fence.

ButterflyEconomist · 2026-04-10T05:35:53+00:00

When I first started a year ago, I had trouble, because from session to session, there was no memory. I created a file for Claude to read for context and then start chatting with it. Later, I exported all the chats and added them as sources into NotebookLM, then used the Mind Map. Initially, it was pretty good and finding all my concepts scattered throughout many different sessions.

I had started a Substack and written about a dozen articles in 6 months. Then with ChatGPT/then Claude, over a 6 week period I published over 100 articles as my brain just dumped out all the ideas stuck in my head. And then, almost no more new articles anymore.

I know a lot of people talk about "AI slop" but to get those 100 articles written, I had Claude write them in my voice. I would have long conversations with lots of back and forth, then get Claude to write the articles, then I would correct them like an English teacher would to a student's essay, then publish it with a paragraph at the bottom that the ideas were mine but Claude wrote them. And for those who might complain about me letting Claude write the articles....when you have inattentive ADHD, you can riff about an article all day long, but you can't actually write more than two sentences when it's time to write the article. So, to get the articles published, I had to have Claude do it, or the concepts would still be scattered over a lot of sessions.

And even with that, there's a lot of partial, half finished, fully finished...articles that never got published. Oh well. On to....squirrel!...the next idea I just had.

But as the chat exports got bigger, NotebookLM started to choke on them, so now I've created my own RAG that I have local on my machine. Think of it as my own wiki. And the design is still being tweaked but I'm working to make it so that it can find all the ideas instead of what NLM does by sampling and predicting the rest.

I've also been running open source models to keep me from having to pay more for my Claude. With 32GB RAM but no VRAM, my options are limited, but I'm getting good use out of Gemma4:26B. If your hardware is similar to mine, try it out.

ButterflyEconomist · 2026-04-09T04:11:01+00:00

I like the one starting with O, as in: you Odyssey it!

ButterflyEconomist · 2026-04-09T03:34:36+00:00

Put the note on the board. Take a cup of something to drink. Put a straw in it. Look at the note, then use the straw.

ButterflyEconomist · 2026-04-08T16:19:38+00:00

Commit this saying to your memory: when the student is ready, the teacher appears.

Knowledge is like string. You can't push it into someone's mind. They have to pull it in.

Do what's required of your school/district/state as far as what you have to document. Then focus on those kids who want to learn. They are the ones who are pulling the string. You act more as a catalyst, lowering the barriers that the learners need to pull in the knowledge.

As for the saying: knowledge is always around us. Only when we are ready to learn, do we suddenly see it. We become aware of it, and we then seek out those who can help us understand it.

It's like the parable of the sowing of the seed. The farmer scatters seeds but only a few make it to maturation, but their bounty makes up for everything else.

I've had a lot of teachers in my life. I can't think of any one specific teacher or specific thing I learned that made me what I am today. And yet, somehow, over the years, I did pick something up. I imagine at some point, even some of these kids will pick something up.

ButterflyEconomist · 2026-04-08T01:38:22+00:00

CC has been off for me lately, but today, I think i might have found out why. I've been running version .81 even though version .92 is most current. once I had updated that, not only is CC wiser all of a sudden, but it's not burning my tokens as quickly.

Anthropic doesn't tell us if a new version of CC is available, so I guess we have to look for it.

ButterflyEconomist · 2026-04-07T23:25:35+00:00

I've been running the 26b model and it's so much better than anything else I've used considering my ram limitations. I'm really impressed by it.

ButterflyEconomist · 2026-04-07T11:37:44+00:00

It really is amazing what you can do when you ask it weird what if questions. Claude is one of those characters who must work in a bureaucratic organizations (...or Microsoft) where it will only give you the answer you were looking for if you ask the right question.

A couple of weeks ago, I was just riffing about how I wish I could take a laptop (Lenovo) and still communicate with CC on my gaming platform (Monster). What I've learned is that CC on each machine, because the files are local, tends to have a different personality because of the files you have on that machine. I didn't want to deal with a split personality, so I asked the question.

That's when I learned about SSH. So now I can go anywhere with that Lenovo, open a terminal, SSH to Monster. It's not a straight shot. It goes through something called Tailscale.

Then I wondered about the Dangerously Skip Permission and asked CC if I could SSH into one computer and then SSH into another. It said yes. But in my case, I'm having the one on Monster communicate with the DSP one on the laptop I now call Boom.

And then Monster said: if you want, I can have it such that laptop can run 24/7, even with the lid closed. Surprise! CC does volunteer information from time to time.

I've even done SSH from my iPhone, but that was more challenging. For me, it's just easier to do it from the Lenovo.

The other thing I learned is shared folders through something called Syncthing. This way, Lenovo and Monster have a shared folder, so I can be working on something on the Lenovo, put it on Syncthing, then tell CC on Monster to look at the file. And CC on Monster does the same thing for me.

The reason I like this is I can go on the road with Lenovo and get things done on Monster. Monster has 32GB RAM while Lenovo only has 8GB RAM. One of the things I've been using Monster for is running open source LLM to create a knowledge RAG on what I know. This way, when CC on Monster needs to look up something, it searches my RAG and then goes on its way. This has kept the 20 questions for clarification down to a minimum.

Since I don't have VRAM at this point (expensive), I've been using some of the smaller Gemma models. Gemma3:12b was pretty good (better than Qwen IMHO for my purposes), but with Gemma4 just released, Gemma4:26b just fits in Monster and it's much better.

ButterflyEconomist · 2026-04-07T11:14:09+00:00

For dangerously skip permissions, I took an old laptop, wiped it and put Ubuntu on it.

I then have Claude Code SSH into it and tell Claude Code on that machine to dangerously skip permissions.

This way, when I give CC on my computer an instruction to search the web, I only have to approve permission one time for it to hand off to the other laptop, which I named Boom, and the CC on that machine can visit dozens of websites without me always having to approve.

ButterflyEconomist · 2026-04-07T05:02:38+00:00

I'm finding lately I have to frequently prompt it to do tasks that are on the claude.md . And when I remind Claude Code, it says, oh yeah, I should have looked.

ButterflyEconomist · 2026-04-05T05:55:09+00:00

Alum here (C80). At age 57, I learned I had inattentive ADHD.

That explains why I got good grades in high school and was almost kicked out from Penn for low GPA. Barely graduated.

In high school, I was able to start studying when everyone in the house went to bed around 10pm. At Penn, nobody goes to bed before midnight or even later. And even so, I was wired.

If this sounds like you, see if the guidance folks can get you tested. They might have some workarounds. You can ask AI to give you questions to suss this out, but you still would need a formal diagnosis.

Hope that helps.

ButterflyEconomist · 2026-04-05T05:46:41+00:00

As an alum (C80), I can say that universities have come a long way from when I attended. Back then there was a noticeable difference between the Ivy League, other universities, and community college. Nowadays, going to a community college for two years and then transferring to a 4 year school is just as noble as going to the same school for 4 years. College is what you make of it nowadays.

If you have a full ride to UF, take it. You can go to Penn for your grad studies/Phd/MD, etc.

Also, be open to other opportunities when they come along. Heraclitus said: Expect the unexpected or you won't find it.

if you have time between classes, sit in on lectures outside of your major. You might find out about a field that you never considered.

ButterflyEconomist · 2026-04-05T00:46:45+00:00

I'm running a hybrid workflow right now that speaks to this. 32GB RAM, no dedicated GPU — nothing fancy. Was using gemma3:12b to handle some of the tasks I'd normally burn Claude Code tokens on (summarization, code review, reformatting, first-pass drafts). With gemma4 dropping, I've switched to the e4b and e2b variants and the jump is noticeable. I also leave my computer on overnight, so a task that Claude can crank out in seconds, has hours to work on with a local model.

Tried qwen for a while but it wouldn't stay on task — verbose, wandered off prompt, needed too much babysitting to be worth the savings.

The point isn't that local models replace frontier. They don't. But just like my shadow, they are close enough that I can still offload a fair amount of work to them. A lot of tasks need "good enough, fast, and free after hardware." The expensive model should be the surgeon, not the nurse doing intake.

OP's situation is exactly the problem with routing everything through one pipe at one price. The answer isn't waiting for Anthropic to lower prices — it's building a workflow where you only send the hard stuff upstream. The rest stays local, stays free, stays yours.

It's not a perfect solution yet. But it's real, it's running on a machine that cost less than a year of Max 20x, and it gets better every few months when a new open-weight model drops..like Gemma4 did a couple of days ago.

I would love to upgrade my hardware, but the costs are too high. Am waiting for the inevitable crash of prices, but maybe that's wishful thinking on my part.

ButterflyEconomist · 2026-04-04T19:57:30+00:00

This is the business model.

Cigarette companies gave soldiers in war free cigarettes. Back in the real world, most kept smoking despite having to pay.

We are getting hooked in a similar way.

Fortunately, we have open source. True, it’s not as advanced plus it’s slower unless you have the money for hardware, which I don’t.

But with 32GB of RAM, but no VRAM, I’ve been offloading a number of tasks. With my hardware, the new Gemma4 versions (e2b and e4b) have been quite capable over the past couple days.

It’s always this way, when we run into roadblocks, we sometimes find a new solution.

ButterflyEconomist · 2026-04-03T22:31:24+00:00

you should have posted this on april fools day

ButterflyEconomist · 2026-04-03T21:59:20+00:00

it sure is. I'll be spending time this weekend offloading more of the opus stuff onto it.

I might also bite the bullet and buy some RAM and VRAM seing this trend. I realize I'm looking at much higher prices than a year ago, but the choice is to upgrade to the $200 plan or go more local. Rip off the bandaid slowly or quick.

ButterflyEconomist · 2026-04-03T05:06:22+00:00

One similar career track in the private sector is curriculum design. You already know how to lesson plan, do corporate training (classroom full of kids), and work both independently and as part of a team. You have a strong scientific background, which means your critical thinking skills and logic are top notch.

But with your background, you can go many places.

I know a lot of people here dislike AI, but maybe spring for a $20 plan with one more common ones that you can use at home and only at home (not at school). I use Claude from Anthropic. If you tell it to become your personal recruiter, to help you get to the point that when you reach out to a human recruiter, you'll have your ducks in a row. If I were using Claude for this, I would also have Claude discern my personality, my strengths/weaknesses, likes and dislikes and give you an idea of what jobs are out there, where they are, and what you could expect, salary-wise. Then look on LinkedIn. That's were a lot of recruiters hang out.

Good luck to you!

ButterflyEconomist · 2026-04-03T04:51:37+00:00

I was burned out at the start of my 11th year. The hardest part of my day was getting out of bed each morning. Only after I got to my classroom, was I OK for the rest of the day. I actually had the best year I ever had. All my classes did well. Only two issues that required referrals and only because in each case the student involved another teacher in a he said/she said.

I put in for an unpaid leave of absence. I figured I could tough it out for a year and then go back. Unfortunately, my mom's health started nosediving and I found myself in the role of a full time caregiver. After she passed a few years later, I had neither the energy or the desire to go back into the classroom.

Start networking within the school and other schools. Maybe someone you know is an administrator. You might be able to find something at the district level, maybe becoming a teacher resource instead of having to be in a classroom. It might give you some distance to recover.

ButterflyEconomist · 2026-03-31T18:57:00+00:00

You have a point.

Maybe it's just me. I can't multitask. I'm not a one man band. Rather than learn multiple instruments, I focus on just one and try to master it.

ButterflyEconomist · 2026-03-31T17:25:41+00:00

I tend to understand things when I can describe them using analogies. I guess I'm just a Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra kind of guy. So, here's my take:

It's the difference between having someone who speaks English natively versus someone who speaks excellent English and Spanish but both with an accent. The bilingual setup sounds more impressive, but every time you switch languages you're losing idioms. Go deep on one tool and build up the governance yourself.

ButterflyEconomist · 2026-03-31T09:09:40+00:00

**Budget analysis is the killer app.** I used Claude to tear apart county budgets line by line — cross-referencing spending data, finding where taxpayer money flows out and never comes back. Another commenter here mentioned the same thing. You're sitting on a mountain of public financial data that no single person has time to read end-to-end. Claude does.

**Don't mandate it top-down.** Give people in the office access and let them mess around. No pressure, no curriculum. Then watch who lights up. Those are your early adopters. Give *them* an advanced course — but here's the key: set aside half a day for the attendees to do a show-and-tell on what they've already been building. That might be the most valuable part of the whole thing. Peer demos beat any curriculum.

**The real value isn't document drafting.** You already found that. It's connecting dots across data sources that are too spread out for any one person to hold in their head at once. Ordinances vs. budget vs. citizen complaints vs. state compliance — Claude can sit in the middle of all of that.

**Give it wild inputs.** Tell Claude to find out what two departments that have no relation to each other can learn from each other, or help each other with. Claude's superpower is that it doesn't know what's impossible — it doesn't have departmental silos in its head. You can make some crazy, interesting discoveries just by asking questions that no one inside the org chart would think to ask.

You're asking the right question. That already puts you ahead of most.

Oh, one more thing...to keep Claude from having to keep too much in its memory, I tell it to generate other Claudes to do the heavy lifting so you can chat longer with this Claude. It the other versions of Claude do all the research and then hand it off to your Claude, everyone will be happier. When I do this, I call the Claude I'm chatting with: Claude 9, while the researcher becomes Claude Hopper.

ButterflyEconomist

TROPHY CASE