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Comment by pavel_lishin | Hacker News Reader

Another comment: you can just tell the person asking you that you don't know the answer. You don't have to look it up for them in any way; it's nice if you do, but you're allowed to just say "Sorry, I don't know! I'd look online, or maybe ask an LLM or something."

You don't have to start doing their research for them, or copying and pasting or transcribing Claude's answer.

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A certain type of person (quite common in tech) really dislikes saying "I don't know". They seem to have a strong need for always having an answer, even if that answer is from google or a chatbot or simply pulled out of their arse.

I think this is why consider the willingness to say "I don't know" a trust signal

Exactly. I'd rather have a quick "I don't know" than wait for them to generate a reply that is likely to be wrong because I already asked the same models myself before consulting a human. If they generate a reply, I get to tell them exactly how the response is wrong, since the core content is usually the same. Only then do I get the "I don't know."

There are a few people I can tell are better at prompting than I am. Them, I'll tolerate this from, though most of them do more than function as an AI proxy anyhow and usually will say "I don't know, I'll check X" first.

The problem is that for most questions "I don't know" isn't correct. You ofetn know part of the answer but it will take work to get a full answer or one you're confident of.

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