Chapter 12 · The lamp and the rule
Meta-alphabet
In the brief edition: Did the AI stay inside the document you gave it
What was read, and when
- The two exchanges were recorded on 26 September 2026, in the same minute, from the model named in their headers, with the vendor's defaults and no system prompt. The anchored ask carried the opening of § 429.1 of the FTC's cooling-off rule (16 CFR part 429); the bare ask named the rule and carried no text. The rule was read on the eCFR as current to 24 September 2026.
- The maker's page "Reduce hallucinations", undated, read on 25 September 2026: its techniques reduce invented claims and do not eliminate them, and its advice to have the system find a supporting quote for each claim after it answers. The book prints the advice beside its own rule and does not adopt it.
- The hint study: Anthropic, 3 April 2025. Among answers that had moved to a planted hint, two named systems mentioned the hint 25 percent and 39 percent of the time.
- The sentence "A second answer from the machine is not a check" is chapter 8's, from its fine print.
- The monarch: the workshop's own claims file, 28 August 2026. One engine, one day, one take per edition on sibling briefs in two languages. It is one day's evidence and no measurement.
- The publication the author runs: its own log, 19 to 20 September 2026. The citation check was built on the day the question was asked.
The sources are printed in the full edition, chapter by chapter, with the day each was read. This page prints the same list.