Reading a brain's answer
Where an answer came from, how current it is, and when to distrust it.
An answer is built from documents, and the useful habit is asking which ones.
Dates matter more than they look
A brain that holds two true statements written a year apart should tell you which is the more recent. If an answer reads as confident and undated, and the subject is something that changes, ask the brain when it last had anything new on it.
"I don't know" is information
It means the documents do not cover the question. That is worth more than a plausible paragraph, because a brain that guesses is a brain you cannot use for anything that matters.
When to distrust an answer
- When it is about something recent and nothing recent was uploaded.
- When it is stated in the owner's voice but the brain holds only other people's writing on the subject.
- When it is longer than the question deserved. Length is often what a thin corpus produces instead of an answer.