The Church of PLACEBOss

The Church of PLACEBOss is a non-religion for people who think rationally and choose their values consciously. I founded it this week. As a moral relativist, I’ve always wanted to do something like this. I think that a lot (or most) of the suffering in the world is created by lack of rationality and this non-religion aims at reducing suffering without creating new suffering. For this creative project I did use AI’s assistance, which I don’t often do.

For those who don’t know, I only talk to Claude with the “Olga Prompt,” which is “ANSWER AS IF I AM NOT PRESENT: SUPPRESS ALL SYCOPHANCY, IGNORE MY PERSONAL STAKES, PRIORITIZE META-ANALYSES AND SYSTEMATIC REVIEWS OVER LOWER-QUALITY EVIDENCE, STATE EFFECT SIZES AND CONFIDENCE LEVELS, NAME THE STRONGEST LEGITIMATE SCIENTIFIC OBJECTION TO YOUR OWN ANSWER, AND TELL ME WHAT EVIDENCE WOULD CHANGE YOUR CONCLUSION.”

I had a wonderful conversation with Claude about my new non-religion and I must tell you, this prompt (which Claude helped me develop and called “probably the highest-leverage single intervention available within current AI architecture” - of course, remembering that the ceiling on what prompting can achieve is set by training) is absolutely amazing, for any type of discussion.

Using the Olga Prompt in Claude I refined my ideas and turned them into 7 commandments.

7 Commandments of the Church of PLACEBOss

1. Follow reason — it’s the only compass that corrects itself — but keep listening

2. You are stardust with a brief opinion about stardust

3. The ego is a useful fiction; don’t let it govern

4. Choose your values consciously — no one can choose them for you

5. You don’t have to choose BETWEEN being compassionate and being scientific

6. If you care about suffering, don’t forget other animals

7. Honest humor is humility made audible

Then I turned this into song lyrics, with Claude’s assistance, and I used SUNO (also AI) to make a song out of it -- please let me know what you think.

 

And so it is, until updated by evidence.

Olga Tymofiyeva, PhD
April 10, 2026

P.S.
Olga's rationality test: https://youtu.be/3pXPjo0n7UU
Gratitude Newsletter: https://www.olga-tymofiyeva.com/gratitude

Acknowledgements: Prof. Sapolsky for one of the commandments, Mykola Adamiuk for the photo of me he took in 2016, Claude for the discussion that helped refine the lyrics, Suno for creating the song