Thinking like an AI

The first block for building an intellectual flywheel

From my personal log of the collaborative learning expedition, into AI-Augmented Wisdom Praxis, which is

also a research seminar and an action research project, all woven together into one transformative experience.

I am writing the first in a series of the research seminar’s lectures, with the title, “What is wisdom praxis?” In a semester-long, classic research seminar, such a lecture would be way overdue. Thankfully, the lack of an appropriate channel and time prevented me from presenting it earlier. I say, “thankfully” because the seminar is only one thread of the 3-fold aspect of the AI-Augmented Wisdom Praxis program. The two others are the Collaborative Learning Expedition and the Generative Action Research, both of which require community before content. Now, after 6 weeks, we have the beginning of a web of community-seeding, trusted relationships, and it’s time to introduce the foundational themes of the seminar.

Developing and introducing my thoughts in writing about any subject is a relational process in a double sense. 1. My audience is always present with me in the process of writing. Somehow, imagining each subsequent thought’s relevance to their guessed contexts semi-consciously guides my choice in bringing forth the next thought. (Thinking about it, it’s not that different from the pattern of how an AI agent is putting together the tokens of its replies to our prompts.)

2. For turning my felt sense and implicit knowing into words, explicit sentences, shareable content, I also need a holistic thinking/questioning/prompting partner and I can’t always call a friend or a colleague who knows my work, between two paragraphs. So, I turn to one or more of my AI mates. Here is an example from this morning, which inspired me to write this note.

I asked Claude Opus 4.6, What is wisdom praxis? I left that prompt intentionally open-ended and under-defined because I was not interested in its straightforward definition. Of course, I do have some nebulous ideas about praxis and wisdom and wisdom praxis, but I have never put them together into a coherent presentation. That made me interested in all the aspects of the question that I didn’t store in my short-term memory.

Claude didn’t disappoint me. It came back with:

“Good question, George — and one that sits right at the heart of your work, so I want to make sure I respond at the right level. Are you asking this as a conceptual/philosophical question — what does “wisdom praxis” mean as a term of art? Or are you working on something specific — perhaps drafting a section of the discussion paper where you need to articulate it for an audience encountering it for the first time? The answer I’d give differs quite a bit depending on whether this is for your own thinking, for the webinar invitation paper, or for another context entirely.”

Then, I explained, “It’s more like a discussion paper, but more precisely, it is the first in a series of my research seminar’s lectures. It will be presented in a wiki of the AAWP space on HumHub, thus enabling community members to comment and ask questions about each of its sections.”

Responding, Claude posed a bunch of clarifying questions that provoked this comment from me: “Your questions, as always, are very helpful because they help me turn my implicit knowing into explicit, shareable content. They also remind me of gaps in my thinking and nudge me to bridge them. “

I notice that I am enjoying documenting the self-observation of my metacognition about how I interact with my AI colleagues. Documenting it makes me more self-aware of the process and allows me to detect, over time, the evolution of my mental models related to it, as well as to critique and improve them.

I also notice that this collaboration with Claude is a good example of the process itself: the clarifying questions functioning as a kind of Sculptor’s dialogue, helping what’s latent find its form.

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Go back and look at the two-way mirror in the image at the top of the page. Waaay back, in the seventies, I designed and had somebody manufacture 20 of them for my Tantra workshops, where we called it the “We Are One” mirror.

I provided this guidance:

Place the mirror halfway between your faces and adjust the distance until the two faces you see in the mirror become one. Then relax your breathing, keep eye contact, and do nothing. If your breathing synchronizes, let it happen, but don't force it. Enjoy the show!

Different decades, different players, but playing with AI as a mirror has some similar intensity and… a bit more