@simonwillison.net I've been perplexed since you first wrote about them in mid-October: Why do you think Skills are so "brilliant"? I agree with the problems you pointed in MCP — but these problems seem to be due to a rushed design on Anthropic; and should be fixed within the protocol, no?

@medericgc.bsky.social Ce que vous découvrez, ce sont les sophistes. Ils sont partout—dans tous les camps. Ils vident la parole de son sens, et nous y perdons tous. Ils cherchent à dominer plutôt que comprendre. Repérez-les!
www.honest-broker.com/p/the-word-o...

8/
If someone who is running cognitive circles around you, whom you cannot get any mutual understanding from despite your best, good faith effort, suddenly can't strawman your simplest argument when asked, this is a sign they are not engaging in a dialogic interaction, but a sophistic interaction.

7/
We must learn to identify these people to restore our information ecosystem's capacity to make meaning. Here's one thing they cannot do: Strawman an argument.

6/
These aren't just manipulative people — they're people with a fundamental communicative learning disorder that makes them treat every human interaction as an opportunity for rhetorical dominance rather than mutual understanding.

5/
I have come to think of sophists as having "Communication-as-Control" learning disorder. They have learned to see language as a tool of control as opposed to a tool for knowledge exchange, and this is not strategic, it is the permanent closing of a potent learning channel.

4/
Sophists don't just lie; they corrupt the entire communicative infrastructure that makes collective reasoning possible. They're cognitive vandals who poison the well of discourse itself.

3/
Plato and Aristotle saw the existential danger: They understood that sophistry wasn't just annoying or unethical, it was anti-cognitive. It destroyed the possibility of genuine learning through dialogue. Socrates literally died fighting against it.

2/
There have been tens of thousands of studies on this traits, and others (related to the Dark Triad or Dark Pentad), however the choice of that term has worked as a "sleigh of hand". It leads most people to think of Machiavelli's "The Prince" and to invoke strategic nuance. This is a red herring.

1/
The psychological trait known as "Machiavellianism" was coined by two psychologists, Geis and Christie in the 70s, to describe people who agree with the statement "The best way to deal with other people is to tell them what they want to hear."

9/
Props to @dsiroker and @brettbejcek at @RewindAI (now @LimitlessAI) for recognizing what so many missed:
Our conversations are our minds unfolding.
Recording them isn’t surveillance. It’s sovereignty.

8/
If this resonates — or you’re already doing it — I’d love to connect.
This frame has changed how I teach, relate, and think.

7/
Conversations are computation.
The transcript isn’t a trace.
It is the thought.
Not a shadow. Not a summary.
The thing itself.

6/
This is my neurodivergent metacognition stack.
It helps me stay coherent. Calm. Clear.
Because my thoughts no longer disappear.

5/
With transcripts + ChatGPT, I can now ask:
– Where did I get stuck?
– What worked well?
– What insight flashed by too fast to notice?

4/
That’s why I record and transcribe almost all my conversations — lectures, meetings, partner talks, AI chats.
Not for recall.
For reflection.

3/
But most of that thinking vanishes.
We forget what we said.
We lose the path we took.
We remember the moment, not the mechanism.

2/
Every time you speak — with a person or with a model — you're performing a computation.
You provide context.
They generate output.
You refine.
It’s iterative reasoning in real time.

1/
Conversations are computation.
Not metaphor. Literal claim.