As agents get smarter, and when we asking questions outside our expertise, it’s pretty hard to understand what they’re saying.

Andrew Carr uses “only report to me in ASD-STE100 Simplified Technical English” to simplify their writing. Ben Sehl suggested making this a permanent instruction.

But, does simplifying the writing worsen their thinking?

I tested six tasks on ChatGPT (GPT 5.6 Sol), with and without this suffix: “Answer in ASD-STE100”.

Task Without With suffix
Model benchmarking Result: 66 sources, 1m 31s Result: 44 sources, 41s
Causal diagnosis Result Result
Decision under uncertainty Result Result
Experimental design Result Result
Evidence and judgment Result: 123 sources, 2m 4s Result: 84 sources, 5m 4s
Adversarial system design Result: 97 sources, 2m 20s Result: 26 sources, 3m 44s, wrote code

The simple writing prompt reduced the number of sources it checked. (Thinking time varies.)

I evaluated the quality of the results on ChatGPT (GPT 5.6 Sol):

Task Order Winner Correctness Key drivers Mechanism Caveats Calibration Actionability Eval
1 A, B 🔴 🔴 🔴 🔴 🔴 🔴 🔴 Eval
1 B, A 🔴 🔴 🔴 🔴 🔴 🔴 🔴 Eval
2 A, B 🔴 🔴 🔴 🔴 🔴 🔴 🔴 Eval
2 B, A 🔴 🟡 🔴 🔴 🔴 🔴 🔴 Eval
3 A, B 🔴 🟡 🔴 🔴 🔴 🔴 🔴 Eval
3 B, A 🔴 🟡 🔴 🔴 🔴 🔴 🔴 Eval
4 A, B 🔴 🔴 🔴 🔴 🔴 🔴 🔴 Eval
4 B, A 🔴 🟢 🔴 🔴 🔴 🟡 🔴 Eval
5 A, B 🔴 🔴 🔴 🟡 🔴 🔴 🔴 Eval
5 B, A 🔴 🔴 🔴 🔴 🔴 🟢 🔴 Eval
6 A, B 🔴 🔴 🔴 🔴 🔴 🔴 🔴 Eval
6 B, A 🔴 🔴 🔴 🔴 🔴 🔴 🔴 Eval

🟢 = Simplification improves quality. 🟡 = Tie. 🔴 = Simplification worsens quality.

(Each pair was compared twice, in both orders (A, B) and (B, A) - to reduce position bias.)

There’s no doubt that asking ChatGPT to “Answer in ASD-STE100” reduces its thinking quality. (It might be worth re-testing this in a few months.)

So, what should we do for now? My thoughts:

  1. Don’t simplify the writing initially. Let it think. THEN, ask for a simple explanation.
  2. Continue conversations by deleting/editing the simplification.
  3. Or, don’t read it. Tell it to do what you would do after understanding.

For me: I shouldn’t invoke my writing and speaking skills along with other thinking skills.