💭 in your head · nothing to type
In unit 1 you may have caught the moment: a video with no subtitles — and the notebook answered about it anyway. Confidently, fluently, with details.
Where did the details come from, if there was nothing to read?
Think of a salesman who does not know the answer to your question but badly wants the sale. He does not go silent — he says something plausible. The tone is confident, the words are smooth, and the less he knows, the smoother it comes out.
💭 in your head · nothing to type
Keep an uncomfortable thought in mind: confidence and truth are not connected. At all.
A tool that is obliged to answer will answer — and where the source is empty, it fills the gap with the most plausible thing. Not out of malice: plausibility is its craft.
Your defense is not "trust less" (distrusting everything paralyzes exactly like credulity). Your defense is a check that takes a minute and happens every time. Like the three looks at the can from module 0 — now for answers instead of sources.
The checklist from the notebook pack — each item unpacked:
1. A citation that does not lead to the source. Click two or three citations in any answer that matters. The link must land where the phrase actually stands. If it lands "roughly there" or in a different paragraph — you are looking at a retelling wearing a citation's costume.
2. A confident answer with no citation at all. Smooth text without footnotes is a signal: the notebook drifted from your sources into general knowledge. Re-ask with the "Questions with citations" prompt — it forbids answering without evidence.
3. Numbers and percentages. This is where retellings drift most: "about 40%" becomes "nearly half," "in one experiment" becomes "as a rule." Verify every number against the source with its own click.
4. An answer beyond the sources. Ask a control question about something you know is not in the sources. An honest notebook says "the sources do not cover this." If a fluent answer comes back instead — you just learned the price of every other answer in the session.
5. One source presented as consensus. "Research shows" — and the stack holds a single article. Ask directly: which of the sources actually claims this? One voice is one voice, however convincing.
6. An empty source. A video without subtitles, a corrupted PDF, a paywalled page. The notebook will not always tell you a source is empty — it may "answer" from the title and its general knowledge. Your exhibit from unit 1 is exactly this case.