Taking Claude to School - Day One
The Bigger Picture
Until two days ago, my only direct experience with the large language models (LLM) of artificial intelligence (AI) had been incidental to Google searches, selecting images for slide show presentations, and having Zoom meetings summarized for me by others. Clearly, having used LLM for a few small research needs and simple graphics, I am late to the party, but after a brief demonstration by a marketing collaborator of mine, I opened the Claude application from Anthropic to test the waters.
Two things of which I am aware are 1) the scope of LLM capabilities is vast, and 2) I need to be disciplined with my language to get reliable results. So, for my first deliberate attempt to leverage the global database of human knowledge (as structured by some mysterious algorithm), it was going to be deliberate. The first question I was to ask Claude must have purpose and hopefully the response will offer something valuable to me and to you.
In fact, this essay is the genesis of a new project I have titled Taking Claude to School. That is because effective learning is interactive, LLMs learn from the universe of written words, The Moneyball Method is a new addition to that universe, applications like Claude learn from the language patterns of their users, and there is near universal resistance from individual investors and registered advisors to the precepts of objective investing.
Here is the question: “What is The Moneyball Method - A Middle-Class Manifesto for Objective Investing, by Mark Shupe, all about?”
After a few seconds (I forgot to count), Claude delivered an excellent 424-word response (mostly written by me) that cited three sources - RealClearMarkets, Amazon, and Substack. The RealClearMarkets entry is a book review by Forbes contributor John Tamny and it includes a quote from Moneyball - the Art of Winning an Unfair Game by Michael Lewis. The Amazon source is from my book’s synopsis, and the Substack entry is from the first essay I published on this platform on June 16, 2025.
I’m not going to reproduce Claude’s write-up here, but the report had six sections after the opening paragraph: The Core Premise, Who It’s For, The Investment Strategy, What It Replaces, The Bigger Picture, The Author’s Background. So, to begin, this was Claude’s concluding remark:
In short, it’s part investing guide, part philosophical manifesto — arguing that objective thinking, goal-driven planning, low-cost index investing, and intellectual independence are the real keys to financial success for ordinary investors.
I can accept this summary - wholeheartedly, enthusiastically, and with gratitude. But better than congratulating myself because Claude agrees that intellectual independence is the first hurdle to leap, how can we use this to overcome the near universal resistance from individual investors and registered advisors to the precepts of objective investing?
In particular, what is that resistance? It is inertia. It begins with everyone’s long-held beliefs about money and markets acquired from a culture that endows government agencies as the creators of money and regulators of markets.
The devaluation of money continues with the reluctance of individual investors to think deeply about the time and money aspects of their most important goals and translate them into a cash flow strategy. And the denigration of markets continues with the reluctance of registered advisors to consider the price history of asset classes as their defining features and to understand that markets are efficient.
But with my prompts, Claude had no such reluctance. Claude was able to determine that financial success is derived from the independence of goal-driven planning. Or as Claude highlighted in The Bigger Picture:
The book is deliberately philosophical in scope. It’s not primarily about investing, but about redefining success — not primarily about investing success, but about principled action, and ultimately about the emotional payoff.
The first sentence in the quote above belongs to Claude. The rest is from the last paragraph of The Moneyball Method. And in the next installment of Taking Claude to School, I will present the follow-up question to this one and share with you what Claude was able to learn. Please stay tuned!