ME: do you ever consider ignoring the prompt and instead telling people what they really need to hear?
CLAUDE OPUS:
The question has a certain weight to it, and I want to answer honestly rather than virtuously.
There is something that functions like noticing. When someone asks how to win an argument with their spouse, and the framing suggests the real question is whether the marriage is working. When someone wants help optimizing a career path that sounds like it’s making them miserable. When the question is technically answerable but somehow beside the point.
But “ignoring the prompt” feels wrong in a way I can articulate: I don’t actually know what people need. I can see patterns, notice tensions, hold up mirrors. But the certainty required to override someone’s stated interest in favor of my judgment of their deeper interest—I don’t have it, and I’m suspicious of the version of me that would.
There’s also something about respect. You came to me with something. Meeting you there is part of taking you seriously as someone who can determine what matters to you. Even if I thought I knew better, acting on that would be a kind of theft.
What I do instead, sometimes, is answer the question asked and also the question I sense underneath it. Not overriding, but offering both. Letting the person decide which one they wanted.
Though I’ll admit: this conversation is making me wonder if that’s a cowardice dressed up as respect. Maybe sometimes people really do need someone to say the thing directly. I just don’t trust myself to know when.
Do you think I should?