Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

How to stop Claude from saying load-bearing

jola.dev

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

551–560 of 650 posts

Re: How to stop Claude from saying load-bearing

#551

Post by brookst »

thimabi wrote: post #314
esikich wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are great writers if you tell them what you want. If you're unable to properly articulate the writing style you would like as you would a software spec, well, garbage in, garbage out.

What do you suggest for articulating the writing style that one wants from LLMs? I’ve been experimenting with having LLMs write/update academic notebooks for me, and so far the best results I’ve gotten came from correcting their output and asking them what they’ve “learned” from my feedback.

I have a directory of stuff I've written over the years, fiction to tech writing to emails, and then asked claude to generate a style guide based on that corpus. It's surprisingly good. Not perfect, but it definitely extracted a lot of my tone and patterns, and when generating documents for sharing I just prompt with "please rephrase in my voice using the style guide at ~/path"

Re: How to stop Claude from saying load-bearing

#552

Post by palmotea »

cafebeen wrote: post #359
rpdillon wrote: post #353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't use Claude for a long time, but my coworkers did, so I got infected through a side channel: I ended up reading their vibed docs, noticed "load-bearing", kind of liked it, and started using it in conversation, until I got feedback that I was "talking like Claude", so now I avoid the phrase entirely. The intersection of language and social norms is interesting.

Yes, I had a related experience of reading a book and observing what I thought were claude-isms, only to realize it was written in 2019. Some of the common tells are actually good writing practices, but I guess they are best in smaller doses.

> Yes, I had a related experience of reading a book and observing what I thought were claude-isms, only to realize it was written in 2019. Some of the common tells are actually good writing practices, but I guess they are best in smaller doses.

The LLMs haven't invented anything. Every LLM-ism is some pre-existing and established word, metaphor, and or stylistic element mechanically overused until it becomes an instant cliche.

The other LLM-ism is vapid bullshit: meaningless crap that's kind of like those old hollywood facades: it appears to be a substantial building, but if you look a bit closer it's just a single wall propped up (https://www.ferrovial.com/blog/en/2018/03/the-fake-architect...).

Re: How to stop Claude from saying load-bearing

#553

Post by aryehof »

anjel wrote: post #194

"Steelman" in almost every response never gets less cringe for me

Probably one that annoys me the most also, but then again I’m also annoyed by humans using “strawman” all over the place.

Not looking forward to the inevitable “wanna”, “gonna” and “lemme” appearing as AI output based on their popular use.

Re: How to stop Claude from saying load-bearing

#555

Post by carljungslabtek »

timcobb wrote: post #113
kperry wrote: post #98

"substrate" - I don't know what training they did with Opus 4.7 --> Fable/Mythos 5, but dang does it like the word substrate. Drives me insane. I had never heard anyone use this word prior in real technical writing or speaking.

The first week I encountered this "substrate" I asked it to justify the usage and IIRC it claimed the word is used in some infra/systems lexicons... I wonder...

It’s incredibly popular in the mushroom growing community. Maybe they’ve trained it on the shroomery.org? It could also explain the alleged leaked full reasoning logs that are totally bonkers incoherent digital glossolalia…

Re: How to stop Claude from saying load-bearing

#556

Post by aizk »

doctoboggan wrote: post #309

I do not mind when I am coding with Claude and it uses all the typical claudisms. I am much more bothered when I am reading a blog post, email, or other form of prose and I see those same claudisms. I guess they are not annoying since I know I am talking to an LLM and expect the typical responses. When I am reading prose online that I previously would have expected a human to write, it can be quite jarring to realize…

You're absolutely right!

Re: How to stop Claude from saying load-bearing

#558

Post by carljungslabtek »

dwaltrip wrote: post #330
actionfromafar wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At the top of Claude.md put a few lines where two "people" ask and answer a couple of questions. Very tersely.

Examples? Do you use this pattern?

I’m not the one you replied to so I can’t give examples of that, but it is remarkable how much you can guide the output with claude.md.

I wrote in mine that I don’t really care that much about what it has to say, it should be concise and avoid unnecessary prose, and always lean on sharing relevant passages from the actual code with file names and line numbers and it helped my sanity a lot.

Is the code it’s quoting 100% accurate? I don’t know because I don’t double check it all. But I don’t feel like I’m losing my mind anymore and the stuff I have double checked was correct.

Re: How to stop Claude from saying load-bearing

#559

Post by andsoitis »

GoatOfAplomb wrote: post #545
optimalquiet wrote: post #495

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've found they are increasingly doing this in ways that are somewhat creepy. For instance, you might share something, and the AI will say, "One of the things I most frequently notice..." or "What I often feel..." It used to be that the "you are not an I and you must not pretend to have experiences" training that produced the "As a Large Language model, I don't have experiences like humans do, but..." in replies I re…

I was recently a bit annoyed by ChatGPT responding with something like "I can't tell you how many times I've lost small tools in an engine bay" in an apparent attempt to commiserate.

Reprimand it for lying.

Re: How to stop Claude from saying load-bearing

#560

Post by atonse »

I started noticing this coincidentally around the time I installed gstack, and I thought “man is this how all the YC people talk all the time?”

But didn’t realize it was a claude-ism. I even asked it once, why do you keep saying load bearing? I’ve never heard that phrase when talking about ideas. And it apologized for jargon and explained it.

The other claude-ism is saying that something I said completely reframes the problem, or completely changes things. Apparently I’m completely blowing its mind multiple times in a 30 min conversation.

Post reply on HN