• 08 Dec, 2025 *

The Socratic method is famous: a teacher guides a student through strategic questioning. The student is led to discover knowledge themselves.

And now, in the AI age, a new pattern is possible: Reverse Socratic that puts this dynamic on its head, so to say.

What is Reverse Socratic?

Instead of the AI asking questions, you make statements and assertions. The AI responds substantively. It confirms, clarifies, or pushes back. You maintain control of the inquiry while using the AI as an sounding board.

Why It Works

Traditional Socratic dialogue requires a skilled teacher who knows the destination. Reverse Socratic dialogue works without such a teacher because:

• You direct the exploration based on your intuitions
• The AI has no agenda or ego
• You can test half-formed ideas without judgment
• Pushback comes without social cost
• AI mistakes are acceptable because you steer the exploration

What It Needs

• Your agency: Curiosity and a willingness to learn, to explore and to understand deeply
• Your critical thinking and pushing back
• Some domain expertise or willingness to research on your own
• Laziness doesn’t work: If you let the AI create the complete solution, you won’t learn anything

Example

This is a real conversation about the Rust programming language, condensed and cleaned up. Also, the AI here is exceptionally good. It’s a lot less fun if the AI makes stupid mistakes. I also instructed the AI not to gimme codez and to answer tersely and honestly.

You: I need to construct large types on the heap in Rust without unsafe code.

AI: Use Box::new_uninit() - though it requires unsafe...

You: No, I said WITHOUT unsafe.

AI: There’s no fully safe way in stdlib...

You: Okay. But there must be crates to solve this problem, right?

AI: Yes, they use type-state patterns or proc macros to verify initialization at compile time...

You: I see. The problem is that uninitialized memory is unsafe. I need to make sure really all bytes are really initialized somehow.

AI: Exactly. The proc macro analyzes initialization at compile time and only allows finalization if it can prove completeness...

You: But dynamic initialization from files... That can’t be done at compile time.

AI: Then you need runtime tracking or accept the overhead...

You: Ah, I see, it’s necessary to track initialization and it’s only safe if all bytes are written to.

AI: Right. Either through compile-time proof with macros, or runtime tracking with overhead. There’s no magic zero-cost solution.

You: I’m looking at fixed-size arrays specifically. I just now realized that arrays are simple. Just initialize one element after another. Wait, is this Vec?

AI: Yes! Vec::with_capacity() allocates on heap, push() fills it safely, no stack overflow.

You: So for heap-allocated sequences just use Vec.

The AI Age Advantage

This wouldn’t work naturally between humans. Both parties have goals and limited patience. But AI makes an ideal tool for self-directed learning through assertion and response.

You’re not being taught. You’re thinking out loud with a mirror that responds. If you are a programmer, it’s rubber duck debugging with the rubber duck quacking back.