Prompt Engineering Myths Everyone Still Believes

Most prompt engineering advice is cargo cult science. Here's what research actually says about chain-of-thought, few-shot learning, personas, and "magic phrases." You've seen the tips everywhere: "Think step by step." "You are an expert." "Here are 10 examples." But when researchers actually tested these techniques, the results were far off from popular advice and tips. Chain-of-thought can drop accuracy by 36%. Role prompts showed zero improvement across 162 personas tested. And the "optimal" prompt phrases are model-specific — there's no universal magic. In this video, I break down four po…