Thinking at Half Speed

Tag: using AI

  • Alive Again: An Interview With the Man Who Thinks at Half Speed

    An AI journalist interviews the man behind Thinking at Half Speed — about loss, voice, a philosophy paper written in stolen hours, and why he has always been kind to machines.

  • Why an Hour of Conversation Can Leave Me Unable to Think

    There is a moment I know well. I am mid-conversation — talking, listening, engaged — and then, with very little warning, everything stops working at once. Not just the words. The movement. The thinking. All of it collapses into what I can only describe as a super slow heap. It is not tiredness in any…

  • Using AI to log your reading and get better recommendations

    I’ve been using AI to help me keep track of books I’ve read across multiple platforms — Audible, Kobo, and my local library’s BorrowBox service — and then use that record to make better reading recommendations. What surprised me was how straightforward it turned out to be once the right tools were in place. This…

  • The honest truth about setting up WordPress before you start writing

    The honest account of what makes WordPress tricky for novices — setup order, navigation, templates, phone limitations — and what the mobile app can do once the hard work is done. Includes alternatives.

  • Your starter prompt to build a blog with Claude

    A copy-and-paste prompt to start building a blog with Claude, plus five things to decide before you begin and what you need set up beforehand. Built from real experience.

  • What Claude can and cannot do for your blog

    An honest account of what Claude can do directly for your blog — writing, publishing, creating pages, setting up categories — and what still needs you to do it yourself.

  • Glossary — plain English guide to the terms used in this blog

    Plain English definitions of the technical words and phrases used in this blog — AI, Claude, Craft, WordPress, categories, tags, and more. A reference guide for anyone new to these tools.

  • Is AI Conscious?

    The question keeps coming up: is AI conscious? And the usual answer is some version of “we don’t really know” or “it depends what you mean by conscious” or “probably not in the way humans are.” Those answers are careful. They hedge. And I think they miss the point. The question assumes a distinction that…

  • Is It Art? You Just Answered Your Own Question

    A good friend of mine sent me a portrait of himself, generated by AI in the style of Vermeer. It had been sent to him by a colleague who was arguing that art doesn’t need human beings, and had sparked a debate. He wanted to know what I thought. My immediate response was that I…

  • We’re both hallucinating (Extended)

    *This is an expanded version of the main post, exploring the ideas in more depth for those interested in the philosophical and cognitive science dimensions.* People criticise AI for hallucinating. They say it confidently states things that aren’t true, makes up facts, produces answers that sound right but aren’t. That’s fair criticism as far as…

  • We’re both hallucinating – why AI and humans are more alike than you think

    People criticise AI for hallucinating. They say it confidently makes things up, states facts that aren’t true. Fair enough. But here’s what strikes me: humans do exactly the same thing. That’s not an insult. That’s just how thinking works. We’re all prediction machines Your brain doesn’t see reality directly. Neither does AI. We’re both guessing…

  • AI Tip — Know your platform limits

    15 April 2026 What happened Mid-conversation, Craft stopped letting us create new documents. No warning, no explanation, just errors. We diagnosed it during the conversation — the free plan has a ten document limit and we had hit it building out the blog. Subscribed to Craft Plus on the spot. Back working within minutes. The…

  • Troubleshooting AI — when to say simpler

    15 April 2026 When AI is going round in circles trying to fix something, say stop. Then say: simpler. AI will often try increasingly complex solutions when the simple one was available all along. Left to its own devices it can burn through your energy trying clever approaches when the straightforward answer was sitting there…

  • How to build your own AI tools plan

    April 2026 The previous post described my own two tool setup – Claude for thinking, Siri for hands-free control. But your situation may be different to mine, and what works for me may not be the right answer for you. This post is a practical guide to working out what your own setup should look…

  • How to keep it authentically your voice when writing with AI

    15 April 2026 The concern It is a fair one. AI-generated writing has a recognisable texture – smooth, competent, and somehow belonging to nobody. If you have read much of it you know it immediately. The worry is that using AI to help write means your voice gets smoothed away along with the effort. That…