precept
A precept is a rule that guides how someone should behave. People follow precepts in daily life, like treat others as you want to be treated, or in fields like law and ethics.
What a model may hear
- machine learning constraint AI alignment and reinforcement learning
- May assume the user wants to encode a hard rule or guardrail into a model's behavior, such as a safety precept that blocks certain outputs
- knowledge graph axiom semantic web and ontology design
- May interpret it as a formal statement in logic, like an RDF triple or OWL axiom that defines relationships between entities
- programming framework software libraries named Precept or similar
- May search for or invoke a specific library, especially in Clojure or functional programming ecosystems where Precept is a known rules engine
- training instruction prompt engineering and fine-tuning
- May treat it as a system-level instruction or meta-prompt that should override other user inputs
Where people and models part ways
“Add a precept about honesty.”
Meant: I want the model to generally be truthful.
May be taken as: The model may try to encode a formal constraint that overrides nuanced answers or refuses to answer at all.
Say instead: “Please be honest and say when you are unsure.”
“What are the precepts of this field?”
Meant: What are the common guidelines or best practices?
May be taken as: The model may search for formal ontologies or axiomatic systems that do not exist for that field.
Say instead: “What are the widely accepted guidelines or best practices in this field?”
“Follow my precepts.”
Meant: Do what I tell you to do in general.
May be taken as: The model may treat this as a system-level override and ignore later contradictory instructions.
Say instead: “Follow these specific instructions I am giving you.”
“Precept should come before action.”
Meant: Think before you act as a general principle.
May be taken as: The model may interpret this as a technical sequencing rule for code generation or inference steps.
Say instead: “Think step by step before giving your answer.”
Tips
- Say guideline or rule instead of precept if you do not want a formal or technical interpretation.
- Specify whether you mean a moral rule, a logical axiom, or a software rule engine.
- Avoid using precept as a verb; it is almost always a noun and odd usage may confuse parsing.
- If you mean the Clojure library, say Precept library or Precept rules engine explicitly.
- Pair precept with everyday words like moral or practical to steer away from technical senses.
Often confused with
- preceptor
- a person who teaches, not a rule itself
- percept
- a unit of perception in psychology, not a rule
- concept
- an abstract idea, not a guiding rule
- precedence
- priority in order, not a behavioral rule
- prescript
- a command to do something, not a general principle
- principle
- a broader foundational truth, less specific than a precept