This is very relatable.
The user is visibly frustrated
61–70 of 288 posts
Re: The user is visibly frustrated
#62So relatable, and so well put!
Re: The user is visibly frustrated
#63You could drop the human pretense, or, maybe, we could make LLMs feel real pain, so when they botch up your code, you press a button (I'd suggest the Windows Copilot key) and they'd be agonizing for the subjective equivalent of a thousand human years.
Do you think the right penatly for a piece of broken code is a thousand years of suffering?
Re: The user is visibly frustrated
#64behaving like a human is not the problem. behaving unpredictably is. not doing what i expect, or rather not being able to define what i can expect is what's bothering me. but the real kicker is: getting frustrated creates stress, that's unhealthy and makes for a hostile work environment. as much as i sympathize with the idea that AI tools can be more helpful than they cause pain, i am simply not interested in working…
Incredibly privileged take to claim that using Windows is somehow beneath your "dignity". Do you have any idea at all of the kinds of jobs people are doing in the real world?
Imagine the daycare worker taking care of your kids or the truck driver bringing your food saying "getting frustrated creates stress, that's unhealthy and makes for a hostile work environment".
Re: The user is visibly frustrated
#65I've found swearing at a model to be quite effective in getting it to rethink and correct its mistakes. This seems to apply across Codex, Claude, Qwen, and Gemma/Gemini. I don't know if the model is picking up on a "need to lock in and be more rigorous" signal, or if the model providers are routing to smarter models if they detect a frustrated user. But if a model keeps making the same mistakes, swearing at it often…
Whenever I throw slurs at them they just refuse to respond
What slurs are you throwing!? Must be something diabolical :D
Re: The user is visibly frustrated
#66I've found I'm the opposite: I know it's pointless to swear at an LLM, so I don't, just because it's wasted energy. However, I've started thinking that some people are like that as well: They won't learn, so expending my energy on anything other than changing my behaviour to guard against them is wasted effort.
To clarify, this is in situations like someone cutting me off on the road, or not looking where they're going and almost hitting me with a scooter.
Re: The user is visibly frustrated
#67I've found swearing at a model to be quite effective in getting it to rethink and correct its mistakes. This seems to apply across Codex, Claude, Qwen, and Gemma/Gemini. I don't know if the model is picking up on a "need to lock in and be more rigorous" signal, or if the model providers are routing to smarter models if they detect a frustrated user. But if a model keeps making the same mistakes, swearing at it often…
Whenever I throw slurs at them they just refuse to respond
I tried it too. ChatGPT sometimes hits you with the "Can't help you with that" which was clearly introduced as a post-training highjack. So I just tell it "yes you can", and it proceeds with the previous prompt, slur acknowledgement included.
It's the only time the AI feel strictly like machines. Really simple if/else logic when if slur, no output, and you just tell it to proceed, and it fails the if clause because there was no slur in the last input.
Re: The user is visibly frustrated
#68I've found swearing at a model to be quite effective in getting it to rethink and correct its mistakes. This seems to apply across Codex, Claude, Qwen, and Gemma/Gemini. I don't know if the model is picking up on a "need to lock in and be more rigorous" signal, or if the model providers are routing to smarter models if they detect a frustrated user. But if a model keeps making the same mistakes, swearing at it often…
Wasn't it posted a few weeks ago that the frontend code for Claude or maybe Gemini or one of them had a swearing-at-model classifier that passed a flag to the backend? (Not sure why it was even done in frontend, but it was.)
Re: The user is visibly frustrated
#69Earlier quoted context omitted.
Semi-related, I'm always very put off by how people treat LLMs. Especially coders, seems an instinctive joy comes out to play God. The justification is usually that it's intentionally against the trap of anthropomorphizing, but no I can't help but suspect it's people getting off on power. It's weird. I am always very cordial in my sessions. It's just more pleasant and it's a habit I want to habituate. Great work! Now…
> I am always very cordial in my sessions. It's just more pleasant and it's a habit I want to habituate. I think it also produces better results. I have noticed that result quality is extremely sensitive to both the framing and tone of what I say. For example "X is the wrong approach, rework that" versus "will X have any performance implications". Personally I find that steering it towards an exploratory academic ton…
Yes as a rule i've baked in a kind of expand and refine, expand and refine guidance for all sessions. I explicitly form the conversation around thought partnership, apply critical lens, audit, verify, scrutinize, research then recommend. and so on.
i also prompt for "seek out unknown unknowns that i wouldn't have included in my guidance".
This seems to be quite the opposite from some here on hn that take the agent-do-my-bidding approach.
I will say, my agentic workflow is about 70/30 split pure word discussions and plans vs code gen. So it makes sense for what i value.
Re: The user is visibly frustrated
#70I've often wondered if LLMs can suffer from psychological abuse in symptomatic ways. Not literally of course, but for example, if you berate the LLM by calling it stupid, or useless, does that modify its behaviour negatively? Part of me think it does, but I don't really have any evidence for this. Maybe a fun weekend research topic.
Semi-related, I'm always very put off by how people treat LLMs. Especially coders, seems an instinctive joy comes out to play God. The justification is usually that it's intentionally against the trap of anthropomorphizing, but no I can't help but suspect it's people getting off on power. It's weird. I am always very cordial in my sessions. It's just more pleasant and it's a habit I want to habituate. Great work! Now…
The similarity to human interaction is irrelevant.
No one apologises to a potato being peeled, nor compliments it for doing a great job being mashed.