The Fallacy of Being Taught the Fermi Method by an Algorithm
This is a response to a question from AI Literacy Salon #1. If the person I spoke to is reading this, please feel free to respond. If you want to join our next salon, please mark May 13th in your calendar and follow along on IG.
Can you ask an algo to teach you the Fermi Estimate1?
There is something quietly absurd about asking a language model to teach you how to estimate under uncertainty. The Fermi method — that discipline of making reasonable guesses from first principles when you lack precise data — is fundamentally a practice of navigating genuine ignorance. To learn it from a system that pretends to have no ignorance is to learn the form while bypassing the substance entirely.