Top all-time · #8768
Mind Prison
Personal blog · mindprison.cc · on HN as 13yearsaiphilosophy
Mind Prison is a personal blog at mindprison.cc about ai and philosophy. Since 2023, 8 different Hacker News readers have linked it 76 times, most often “Why don't LLMs ask for calculators?”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-08-12, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (6) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link Mind Prison for skeptical AI essays, including its analysis of LLM arithmetic and reasoning, its critique of AI enthusiasts' imagined futures, and its coverage of AI image trends.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 6 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Defy the algorithm: An exclusive illustrated human guide to AI, tech, and the Philosophy for Rebels.
Most-linked posts?
- Why don't LLMs ask for calculators?3 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2025-02-17
- Technological Acceleration Paradox – Why the future is already obsolete2 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2024-02-23
- AI Discovers Novel Cancer Drug, or Did It?2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2025-10-27
- /p/studio-ghibli-style-ai-art-crisis-openai2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2025-03-29
- Grokipedia or Slopipedia? Is It Truthful and Accurate?2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2025-11-05
What Hacker News says?
> Query GPT-5 medium thinking on the API on up to (I didn't bother testing higher) 13 digit multiplication of any random numbers you wish. Then watch it get it exactly right. I'm not sure if "on the API" here means "the LLM and nothing else ." This is important because it's easy to overestimate the algorithm when you give it credit for work it didn't actually do. In general, human developers have taken steps to make…
Comment linking /p/why-llms-dont-ask-for-calculators
on “A small number of samples can poison LLMs of any size”Submitted The question that no LLM can answer and why it is important as a story · 94 points
HN discussion> AI is not inevitable fate. It is an invitation to wake up. The work is to keep dragging what is singular, poetic, and profoundly alive back into focus, despite all pressures to automate it away. This is the struggle. The race to automate everything. Turn all of our social interactions into algorithmic digital bits. However, I don't think people are just going to wake up from calls to wake up, unfortunately. We typ…
Comment linking /p/dead-internet-at-scale
on “AI, Heidegger, and Evangelion”Submitted We Have Made No Progress Toward AGI as a story · 69 points
HN discussion> https://www.mindprison.cc/p/the-technological-acceleration-p... That is a very good and insightful article. One of the biggest issues I have with AI enthusiasts is that they talk about creating these incredible capabilities ... then they imagine the resulting world with them will look like some hackneyed sci-fi work, like Star Wars, whose universe seems like it could be kinda cool to live in until you actually thi…
Comment linking /p/the-technological-acceleration-paradox
on “Among the A.I. doomsayers”Submitted What if AGI is not coming? as a story · 69 points
HN discussionPotentially there are no good outcomes even if AGI remains under control. If we are actually able to create the type of AI entity they are trying to create, one that exponentially improves, the implications are beyond what most have thought about. Something I recently wrote in depth about here. How we completely misunderstand the future that we think will happen. "The implication is that everyone is enthusiastically…
Comment linking /p/the-technological-acceleration-paradox
on “Among the A.I. doomsayers”Submitted Why don't LLMs ask for calculators? as a story · 41 points
HN discussionGlobal communities have also resulted in precisely the opposite of expectations. They created collections of uniform behavior. I would argue the private moderated communities allow for far greater diversification of ideas. The reason being is that you can exist in multiple such communities. The individual experiences the diversity and not the community. It is the premise of an argument I laid out some time ago for w…
Comment linking /p/uniform-thought-machines
on “Why Bluesky Remains the Most Interesting Experiment in Social Media, by Far”Submitted AI instructed brainwashing effectively nullifies conspiracy beliefs as a story · 16 points
HN discussionWe are all going to be consumed in the AI machines. "All capabilities are built from data analysis and the data they are analyzing is you. Whether by direct intent or not, all advancements are encroaching on consuming every knowable fact and inference about you. Your soul must be sacrificed to the machine to grant the powers it manifests." https://www.mindprison.cc/p/ai-end-of-privacy-end-of-sanity
Comment linking /p/ai-end-of-privacy-end-of-sanity
on “X updates Terms to allow it to use data for AI training”Submitted The Cartesian Crisis: Why You Will Believe Nothing as a story · 6 points
HN discussionTake a look at this vision test - https://www.mindprison.cc/i/143785200/the-impossible-llm-vis... It is an example that shows the difference between understanding and patterns. No model actually understands the most fundamental concept of length. LLMs can seem to do almost anything for which there are sufficient patterns to train on. However, there aren't infinite patterns available to train on. So, edge cases are e…
Comment linking /i/143785200/the-impossible-llm-vision-test
on “We Have Made No Progress Toward AGI”Submitted I Could Have Lived Without AI as a story · 5 points
HN discussionMy understanding was that chain-of-thought is used precisely BECAUSE it doesn't reproduce the same logic that simply asking the question directly does. In "fabricating" an explanation for what it might have done if asked the question directly, it has actually produced correct reasoning. Therefore you can ask the chain-of-thought question to get a better result than asking the question directly. I'd love to see the m…
Comment linking /p/why-llms-dont-ask-for-calculators
on “We Have Made No Progress Toward AGI”Submitted Grokipedia or Slopipedia? Is It Truthful and Accurate? as a story · 4 points
HN discussionSome nice charts here [0], which IMO means LLMs are getting very good at guessing answers to certain arithmetic operations, but they don't actually perform it in a logical fashion. [0] https://www.mindprison.cc/p/why-llms-dont-ask-for-calculator...
Comment linking /p/why-llms-dont-ask-for-calculators
on “Reasoning is not model improvement”Submitted AI Hallucinations: Provably Unsolvable – What Do We Do? as a story · 4 points
HN discussion"Half a year later, that tool is dead, killed because it couldn’t do what it was designed to do." This was my conclusion as well testing the image detectors. Current automated detection isn’t very reliable. I tried out Optic’s AI or Not , which boasts 95% accuracy, on a small sample of my own images. It correctly labeled those with AI content as AI generated, but it also labeled about 50% of my own stock photo compo…
Comment linking /p/ai-art-challenges-meaning-in-a-world
on “OpenAI Quietly Shuts Down Its AI Detection Tool”Submitted Solving Popper's Paradox of Tolerance Before Intolerance Ends Civilization as a story · 4 points
HN discussion> If I ask sonnet what's under my bed it tells me it can't know and tells me to look under it myself. The problem with most such questions is that these answer are likely patterns from training data. It is a typical reply. The calculator question was interesting because the training data is unlikely to have such dialog as typical. People don't typically ask for a calculator or mention it for simple problems. Everyon…
Comment linking /p/the-question-that-no-llm-can-answer
on “Why don't LLMs ask for calculators?”Submitted AI Discovers Novel Cancer Drug, or Did It? as a story · 3 points
HN discussion>Sam Altman Promotes 4o Using Ghibli-Style Images From: https://www.mindprison.cc/p/studio-ghibli-style-ai-art-crisi... He could've chosen anything else.
Comment linking /p/studio-ghibli-style-ai-art-crisis-openai
on “AI generated Ghibli images go viral as OpenAI loosens its rules”Submitted The Catastrophe of Shiny Objects: Boredom, Attention, and Creativity as a story · 3 points
HN discussionIt is quite ironic that OpenAI loosens its rules, promoted Ghibli images, apparently in direct opposition to the viewpoints of Ghibli's founder, while also pursuing DeepSeek for using OpenAI data without permission. FYI, some of my further elaboration on the topic: "Everything that you loved for its uniqueness, craftsmanship, cultural significance, will be mass-produced until you despise seeing it." https://www.mind…
Comment linking /p/studio-ghibli-style-ai-art-crisis-openai
on “AI generated Ghibli images go viral as OpenAI loosens its rules”Submitted Users prefer wrong answers when written by AI as a story · 3 points
HN discussionI perceive current alignment theory as attempting to solve a paradox. The entire concept of solving alignment by aligning to human value systems is flawed from its premise. We aren't aligned ourselves and exhibit unpredictable behaviors. Further elaboration of the flaws in concept I've written here: https://www.mindprison.cc/p/ai-singularity-the-hubris-trap
Comment linking /p/ai-singularity-the-hubris-trap
on “LLMs are too easy to automatically red team into toxicity”Submitted The post-truth chronicles – Dead Internet Theory as a story · 3 points
HN discussionYes, I agree. The real concerns are already here. Long term risk is impossible to evaluate. I'm more concerned about the societal implications for AI used as "intended". Such as I've elaborated on FYI https://www.mindprison.cc/p/ai-and-the-end-to-all-things
Comment linking /p/ai-and-the-end-to-all-things
on “Deepfakes start ringing in voters' ears”Submitted AI Optimists, essay argues AI is easy to control as a story · 3 points
HN discussion