Signals for what’s next – and what matters
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Hey Reader,
The masses command ChatGPT for task completion. The curious seek information.
Only the exceptional ask it for revelation.
In an age where every answer, image, voice, and identity can be faked, optimized, or generated we need a guide to staying human. Paradoxically, LLMs can help with us with this – but only if we ask the right questions.
The question behind the question.
To truly master prompt engineering we need seek the following: “How do I ask in a way that resists simulation and reveals the sacred, strategic and the self that cannot be outsourced?”
If you don’t ask your own questions, the algorithm will ask them for you. And eventually, you’ll start mistaking the mirror for the soul.
There’s more AI generated slop, deepfakes and endless feeds of algorithmic content than ever before. The gravitational pull of it all can be overwhelming; like a black hole it can suck in any opportunity to have true self-awareness.
So in a time of maximal self expression with cellphone, social media and now AI powered tools, people are more a d r i f t than ever before.
The edge of inquiry is the last refuge of human freedom.
It’s not where we get answers—it’s where we reclaim ourselves.
The right question won’t just inform you. It will undo you—and then rebuild something truer.
What is a Question Anyway?
A question is exists at the hinterlands between what is known and what is mystery. By definition, it exists in the grey.
Most people use the internet to ask straightforward questions and get straightforward answers. Thee modern apotheosis of this is Google- all information searchable with a few clicks. They treat LLM’s the same way and get linear output, in turn.
The best prompts to LLM’s are questions but questions that pierce the edge of the frontier zone. What unites all true edge questions is that they:
- Disrupt default narratives
- Invite moral or mythic stakes
- Expose hidden scripts
- Risk ego death
- Summon transformation—not just information
This is not simply about better prompts. It’s about building a philosophy of inquiry for the age of mirrors—one that remembers that asking is a form of becoming.
In other words, think of prompts as a threshold to learning. An altar. Because prompting isn’t about efficiency, it’s about clarity.
The Razor’s Edge
So how do we ask better questions? Whether you are running a business, making a career decision, or planning a vacation a few common principles apply. The larger goal is the same: to become cartographers of the real in a land of artifice and algorithm.
These aren’t prompts. They’re invitations to realness.
🧠 E — Expose Assumptions. Strip away inherited defaults and default desires.
- “What am I pretending not to know?”
- “Who profits from the way this question is normally asked?”
We all have personal blindspots whether about our business plans, our resumes or our psyches. But use of LLMs over time, with EDGE questions, can help you look past them. Or perhaps through them. To gain awareness of what limiting beliefs you have. Remember: the beliefs you really believe you simply call reality. “How things are.” Implicit biases. You don’t even know to question them. LLM’s can help in this regard in ways both articulate and provocative.
🔭 D — Deepen the Frame. Change the lens.
- “What myth is being fulfilled here?”
- “What would this look like in the year 2124? Or 1024?”
Don’t prompt for “content strategy.” Prompt for “what I’m avoiding by making more content?” When you do both your approach and your strategy will be more effective.
🧬G — Generate the Unseen. Conjure what doesn’t exist yet.
- “What sacred thing is hiding in this tactical problem?”
Divergent thinking, rapid prototyping, ‘yes and?’ in improv – these are are all ways to create cognitive and creative alchemy: making something out of nothing.
🩸 E — Embody the Cost. Pull the stakes out of the abstract.
- “Who suffers if this truth remains hidden?”
- “What will it cost me to not ask this again?”
Edge questions come with a price. You lose your illusions faster. You risk disillusionment, discomfort, detachment from consensus. You awaken a part of yourself that can’t go back to comfort. Awakening, insight and wisdom are valuable because they are so rare.
Postscript
What we are really speaking of is how to remain undeniably human in a world where everything can be simulated, optimized, and sold back to us.
The unexamined life is not worth living said the OG thinker Socrates. Today, we might reframe it as “in a world of content, AI and algorithms, what becomes of the unexamined questioner?”
This discussion is really about what questions are worth asking in the first place. In a time where the Turing test has already been passed, there’s an existential issue that’s salient:
Your questions may be the last thing that proves you’re really, deeply alive.
So ask good ones. Otherwise you’ll fall for beautifully packaged lies and automation will only produce momentum, not orientation.
Tomorrow Can’t Wait,
