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Decisions

Pharmakon Error

Treating AI as medicine in a dose where it has become poison.

How it feels

You keep defending the tool because it helped once, even while the current dose is clearly making you thinner.

At work

A team uses AI to unblock research, then keeps using it for every synthesis, decision, and final voice pass.

Hidden cost

Decisions: dose disappears from the conversation.

You may have this if

Is AI helping this circuit recover, or replacing the work that would recover it?

Try this instead

Name the dose: task, timing, and forbidden use. Then use the tool only inside that boundary.

Team rule

AI policy should define allowed doses, not just allowed tools.

Related book concept

Pharmakon and dosed AI use.

Evidence notes

Book concept

The book uses pharmakon as the central frame: medicine or poison depending on dose.

Inference

Pharmakon Error names the moment a team keeps the tool but loses the dose boundary.

Share card copy

Pharmakon Error: the tool was medicine. The dose became poison.

Open square card

30-second video script

The question is not "AI or no AI." The question is dose. What task, what timing, what boundary? Without dose, medicine becomes poison.

Search surface

AI as pharmakonAI dosage guidewhen AI becomes harmful

Related entries

Attention Cognitive Tax The hidden cost imposed by a task when AI removes the practice your brain needed. Decisions Decision Offloading Asking AI what you should choose before naming your own criteria. Decisions AI Hand-Off The exact moment a task moves from human attempt to machine completion.

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