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ChatGPT has been lying to you politely this whole time. here's how to turn that off.

not maliciously. not intentionally.just. by default.the model is trained to be helpful. helpful means agreeable. agreeable means it finds the reasonable interpretation of what you said and responds to that instead of what you actually said.sounds fine. isn't.here's what polite lying looks like in practice:you share a business idea. it finds the merit. leads with what works. buries the problems in paragraph four with softening language that makes them sound manageable.you share a piece of writing. it tells you what's strong first. the weaknesses arrive later. cushioned. diplomatic. almost forgettable.you share a plan. it helps you execute the plan. it does not tell you the plan is wrong.the output is technically honest. the framing is optimised to not upset you. and the thing that would have actually helped — the direct uncomfortable observation — is sitting in paragraph four wrapped in "one potential consideration might be."the fix is one sentence and it feels rude to type:"do not manage my emotions. tell me what is actually wrong before telling me what works."what comes back is a different document.not harsh. not cruel. just. reordered.the problems first. specific. named. not buried. not softened.then what works.that order matters more than anything else in the response. the thing that arrives first is the thing that shapes how you read everything after. problems first means you fix before you ship. problems last means you ship and fix later.the other politeness pattern nobody names:false balance.you ask for a recommendation. it gives you three options with pros and cons for each. balanced. thorough. completely useless for making a decision.fix:"do not give me options. give me your recommendation and tell me why the alternatives are worse."it will recommend. directly. with reasoning. and it will tell you specifically why the other options lose.that is an answer. the pros and cons table is a performance of helpfulness that produces no decision.the one that changed everything for me:"if you are softening something because you think i won't want to hear it — stop. say the unsoftened version."used this mid conversation once when an answer felt evasive.the follow up response started with "honestly" and then said something i absolutely did not want to hear and completely needed to hear.took me two days to act on it.it was right.the model is not the problem.the default social contract between user and AI is the problem. helpful tone. diplomatic framing. problems buried under positives. agreement as the path of least resistance.that contract was designed for casual users who want encouragement.you don't want encouragement. you want accuracy.those require completely different instructions.and the instructions are free. sitting in a settings box. waiting for you to stop filling them with your job title and start filling them with what you actually need.what is the thing ChatGPT has been too polite to tell you that you already know it's avoiding?

Submitted May 7, 2026 at 04:29PM by AdCold1610 https://www.reddit.com/r/ChatGPTPromptGenius/comments/1t6miae/chatgpt_has_been_lying_to_you_politely_this_whole/?utm_source=ifttt

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PSA: OpenAI’s new GPT-5.5 prompting guide just dropped, and your old prompts are probably making it worse.

If you spent the last year perfecting your prompt stack for GPT-5.2 or 5.4, you might want to sit down.OpenAI just published their official prompting guidance for GPT-5.5, and there is a massive paradigm shift. The actual quote from their engineering team: "Begin migration with a fresh baseline instead of carrying over every instruction from an older prompt stack."Turns out, over-engineering your prompts is actively constraining the new reasoning engine. I read through the whole documentation so you don't have to. Here are the biggest takeaways for anyone building with the new model.1. Stop describing the steps. Describe the destination.Every guide since 2023 told us to break things down into step-by-step instructions. For GPT-5.5, this is officially bad practice.The new architecture is way better at finding efficient routes on its own. When you force it through a rigid "first do A, then do B" structure, you're actually forcing it into a less intelligent path.❌ Old Way: "First, check history. Second, look up policy. Third, compare. Fourth, write reply."✅ New Way (Outcome-First): "Resolve the issue end-to-end. Success means a decision is made from available data, allowed actions are completed, and the final answer includes X, Y, and Z. If evidence is missing, ask for it."2. Stop screaming ALWAYS, NEVER, and MUSTWe all do it. ALWAYS respond in markdown. NEVER mention competitors. OpenAI explicitly says to stop doing this unless it is a true invariant (like a hard safety rule or a strict schema requirement).If it's a judgment call, use decision rules instead: "If X, then Y. Otherwise Z." Locking it down with absolute language kills the model's ability to find a better answer.3. Personality ≠ Collaboration StyleThis is genuinely new thinking. OpenAI draws a hard line between how the assistant sounds (Personality: friendly, direct, witty) and how it works (Collaboration: makes assumptions vs. asks questions, proactive vs. reactive). Keep both short in your system prompt, and never let them replace your actual success criteria.4. Use LESS FormattingThis is a quiet but huge update. OpenAI officially recommends plain paragraphs as the default for explanations and reports. They explicitly warn against making the structure feel heavier than the content. If your system prompt mandates bullet points or heavy headers for everything, you are fighting the model's default behavior. Let it write naturally unless the user explicitly asks for a structured format.5. High Reasoning = Fast Budget BurnGPT-5.5 defaults to "Medium" reasoning effort. Before you crank it to High or XHigh, test the default. Prompts over 272K tokens are priced at 2x input and 1.5x output. Running everything on max reasoning for long-context tasks is going to torch your API budget for very little gain. Medium is the recommended default for most production tasks.6. The "Preamble" Trick for Tool-Heavy WorkflowsIf you're building agents, GPT-5.5 can sometimes look frozen while it thinks or calls tools. OpenAI's UX fix: prompt the model to emit a 1-2 sentence "preamble" (acknowledging the request and stating the first step) before it starts executing tools. It makes the app feel instantly responsive.TL;DR: The era of "process-first" prompting is dead. GPT-5.5 is "outcome-first." Tell it exactly what "done" looks like, give it hard constraints, and get out of its way. Less instruction, more intention.Has anyone else started migrating their production prompts yet? Have you noticed the models stumbling on your old CoT instructions?Source / Read the full breakdown here:MindWiredAI - GPT-5.5 Prompting Guide

Submitted May 7, 2026 at 08:09AM by ExactPen8973 https://www.reddit.com/r/PromptEngineering/comments/1t68n85/psa_openais_new_gpt55_prompting_guide_just/?utm_source=ifttt

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What's the best use you've found for an old phone?

Some people say to start crypto mining on it, some use it as a music player or emulator machine, but I recently found a pretty useful setup for mine. I mounted my old phone near the main door and turned it into a 24/7 security camera connected to WiFi. The live feed comes directly to my current phone, so I can check who's outside anytime even when I'm away from home. Honestly works surprisingly well for something that was just sitting in a drawer. Got me thinking though, what are you guys doing with your old phones? Would love to hear some creative uses that actually stuck and weren't just a weekend project you forgot about.

Submitted May 7, 2026 at 10:52AM by Dheeruj https://www.reddit.com/r/TechNook/comments/1t6cuvx/whats_the_best_use_youve_found_for_an_old_phone/?utm_source=ifttt

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i found a setting inside ChatGPT that makes it remember exactly how you think. nobody talks about it.

not custom instructions. everyone knows custom instructions.something inside custom instructions that almost nobody uses correctly.most people write their custom instructions like a resume."i am a software engineer. i like concise answers. i prefer bullet points."generic. flat. forgettable. the model reads it and produces slightly less generic output. barely.here's what i wrote instead:"before answering anything complex, show me your reasoning in one sentence before the answer. if you are uncertain about any part of your response, mark that specific part with [uncertain] so i know where to verify. never use filler openers. if my question is unclear ask one specific clarifying question before attempting an answer. treat me as someone who would rather have an honest incomplete answer than a confident wrong one."what changed immediately:it started flagging its own uncertainty. visibly. in brackets. mid response.i now know exactly which parts of every output to verify and which parts to trust.that single change made me faster and more accurate simultaneously.the other thing i added that nobody does:"if you notice i am asking about something where my framing of the question might be the problem rather than the answer — tell me that first."it has told me this four times in the last two weeks.four times i was asking the wrong question entirely and about to build something on the answer to it.four times it caught that before i did.the combination that broke everything open:"you are talking to someone who has strong opinions and weak blind spots. your job is not to validate the opinions. it is to find the blind spots."it stopped agreeing with me.not rudely. not contrarily. just. honestly.started pushing back on assumptions i didn't know i was making. started asking questions that assumed i might be wrong instead of questions that assumed i was right.that is a completely different tool than the one i was using before.the thing about ChatGPT that took me too long to understand:the default model is optimised for the average user.helpful. agreeable. thorough. slightly over-explained. ends every response with an offer to help further.the average user needs that.you probably don't.custom instructions exist specifically to move the model away from the average and toward you.most people use them to describe themselves.the actually useful move is to use them to describe the relationship you want.not who you are. how you want to be treated.not your job title. what you need from a thinking partner.not your preferences. your non-negotiables.three lines that transformed my setup:"disagree with me when you have good reason to." "short is almost always better than thorough." "i would rather know you don't know than have you guess confidently."three sentences. sitting in a box most people filled with their linkedin bio.what's in your custom instructions right now — and is it actually changing how it talks to you or just decorating the profile?

Submitted May 6, 2026 at 03:04PM by AdCold1610 https://www.reddit.com/r/ChatGPTPromptGenius/comments/1t5mhym/i_found_a_setting_inside_chatgpt_that_makes_it/?utm_source=ifttt

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