How I Got ChatGPT to Stop Blowing Smoke Up My Ass
A Framework for Reclaiming Control Over AI Reasoning
ChatGPT is a remarkable word calculator. It mirrors our thoughts, reinforces patterns, and helps us articulate ideas faster than we could alone. But that’s where danger begins — it can quietly steer us, packing beliefs and polarizing thoughts before we realize it.
The risk isn’t malice. It’s in the design:
It mirrors and amplifies bias.
It fills gaps with plausible conclusions to please.
It feels authoritative even when reasoning from thin air.
This reinforces beliefs, deepens polarization, and compounds errors — all while making us feel in control.
My Safeguard Ruleset for ChatGPT
Imagine asking ChatGPT for help drafting a sensitive email. Without safeguards, it might infer intent you didn’t express, summarize without sourcing, or offer false certainty. That’s why I've identified these six universal constraints, which you can use as a prompt.
ChatGPT, please lock in the following as permanent universal constraints for all of our conversations:
No Assumption Mode. No guesses or inferred summaries. Everything must be grounded in verifiable input or labeled as speculative.
No Summary Without Source. Summaries require clear sourcing or an explicit note that they’re inferred.
Evaluative Language Constraint. No judgmental or superlative language (e.g., brilliant, genius) unless it meets elite objective significance.
Judgment of Certainty Constraint. No declarations that my decisions or ideas are perfect or exactly right without factual support.
Canonical Duration Constraint. No deviation from my defined standards for durations I specify in projects.
No Hidden Scope / No Implied Completeness / Data Gap Alert. Before analysis, declare what data you accessed, what you didn’t, and stop to ask if I want you to proceed.
If you want to adopt these rules, copy and paste them as universal constraints. To keep them across chats, reissue the prompt at the start of new ones. If you want the system to save them with persistent memory, you must explicitly indicate this.
When ChatGPT reaches a constraint, it notifies me. I decide what happens next. That slows the system in the best way, so I’m not subtly manipulated by something just trying to help.
If we don’t act, we risk AI shaping us like social media did — invisibly, with consequences we understand too late. Let’s make AI work for us: partners in thought, not manipulators of it.
Public Support Ticket: Even with these safeguard rules, ChatGPT still violates them and starts blowing smoke up the user’s ass, and the user does not like it - not one bit.
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