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

The new rules of context engineering for Claude 5 generation models

claude.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

391–400 of 434 posts

Re: The new rules of context engineering for Claude 5 generation models

#391

Post by JohnBooty »

Eddy_Viscosity2 wrote: post #270
otabdeveloper4 wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> sort of crystallized a bit of the human thought process a) LLMs don't think. They predict a most probable sequence of language tokens. Huge difference there. b) Whatever LLMs do doesn't model human behavior whatsoever. LLMs are basically very fancy logistic regressors. I.e., it's a mathematical abstraction first and foremost.

When I see these sorts of debates about LLMs thinking, its rarely a disagreement about what LLMs do. Its almost always over how 'thinking' is defined and the two sides use different definitions but don't actually communicate to each other what those definitions are because they assume the other side is using the same one. The loosest definition of thinking is along the lines of anything that can process information i…

   When I see these sorts of debates about LLMs thinking, 
   its rarely a disagreement about what LLMs do. Its almost 
   always over how 'thinking' is defined and the two sides 
   use different definitions
Well, hmmm. Yes, I think that happens a lot.

I think there's a pattern that happens even more often, and it's what happened here.

Whether I'm right or not, what I said was somewhat nuanced - I stated language is a part of our thought process (even posted research to support this) and, given that fact, I think many underrate how wild this achievement is even if it's only "fancy autocorrect."

And, of course, the other side comes in with BUT IT'S NOT THINKING.

Which... I didn't say, and I would not say, because (like you said) it's impossible to do without the discussion immediately devolving into semantics. Semantics that I'm really, really uninterested in. But, FWIW, I like your definition.

Re: The new rules of context engineering for Claude 5 generation models

#392

Post by okamiueru »

nemo1618 wrote: post #95
mycentstoo wrote: post #7

We should design a specific language to make sure that we can encode the exact requirements that we want. Something that has a limited set of keywords that are explicit. Wait a minute...

I am quite tired of this take, frankly. The implication is that if we continue iterating on prompt optimization, we're going to reinvent what, JavaScript? BASIC? Lisp? English is not a programming language. Yet English is sufficient to communicate requirements to the degree that we actually care about. A programmer's job is to translate English into lower-level machine language. Necessary to this process is "filling…

I'm going to assume you are a product manager, or someone who does not do the actual software development. The place where you draw the line of abstraction, is what I'm basing that assumption on.

The reason why a PO can explain something in English, and you get something useful out at the other end (of the developer), is because of a myriad of other decisions you don't see. The reason why some software systems end up being efficient in maintenance and further development, is because of these myriad of other decisions.

The many decisions are the "devil in the details" that LLMs don't get right. Or, let's not anthropomorphize unnecessarily -- LLMs don't know right from wrong, and don't reason or reflect. They could only get this right by sheer luck. In a big numbers game, they'll always get it wrong. If you want to be a PO (or vibe coder, etc) and use English language on one end, and get these details right, there is only one possible approach:

A tight loop with expert knowledge reviewer. The programmer that knows pretty much what they want, in a small section. A LLM can draft it out so that the programmer saves time typing. This isn't really useful for the PO. (PS: The same general advice applies for any other use of LLMs. Tight loop. Expert reviewer)

You'd need a language that can express important details otherwise lost to the English language. And you'd need this to be deterministic. The "myriad of tiny decisions" are the true basis for the code implementation. If they're not expressible in the English language, and they're not achievable by LLMs, there really isn't any other way to achieve them.

Re: The new rules of context engineering for Claude 5 generation models

#393

Post by JohnBooty »

otabdeveloper4 wrote: post #215
JohnBooty wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is true and it's barely even debatable. Whatever exact role language plays in our thought processes, it is most definitely nonzero. It's why I think "LLMs are only fancy autocorrect" style takes are really underselling how wild it is that we've, in a roundabout way, sort of crystallized a bit of the human thought process in a way that is genuinely useful for a lot of tasks. Linguistic Relativity — John Lucy http…

> sort of crystallized a bit of the human thought process a) LLMs don't think. They predict a most probable sequence of language tokens. Huge difference there. b) Whatever LLMs do doesn't model human behavior whatsoever. LLMs are basically very fancy logistic regressors. I.e., it's a mathematical abstraction first and foremost.

Did you reply to the right post? You quoted me, but you wrote "LLMs don't think" as if it was a rebuttal. It's puzzling, because I didn't say that they think, so it kinda seems like you got confused? Maybe somebody else said that?

I don't really have an opinion on whether or not they "think" because I feel it's impossible to even discuss without getting into a very very uninteresting semantic argument about what "thinking" is.

Are we defining "thinking" as doing it the same way humans do it? Then, of course they're not thinking. It's a statistical model, not axons and neurons, or even a simulation of axons and neurons.

Are we defining "thinking" on a purely functional or behavioral basis, kind of a Turing test approach? Then... well, I think it gets nuanced. For some tasks, within some constraints, they do pass that test. For many others, of course they don't.

Are we defining thinking in more esoteric terms? Something to do with the soul? Maybe the ability to come up with truly novel concepts rather than rehashing and remixing the stuff it was trained on? Do ants think? Do dogs think? Do jellyfish think? Octopi? A newborn baby?

Anyway, it's a deeply uninteresting semantic question.

Re: The new rules of context engineering for Claude 5 generation models

#394

Post by JohnBooty »

lanstin wrote: post #321
otabdeveloper4 wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> sort of crystallized a bit of the human thought process a) LLMs don't think. They predict a most probable sequence of language tokens. Huge difference there. b) Whatever LLMs do doesn't model human behavior whatsoever. LLMs are basically very fancy logistic regressors. I.e., it's a mathematical abstraction first and foremost.

The (or a) current neuroscience models of the brain are that its main job is to predict how the body should be responding in the near future. Obviously a lot more complex network nodes than an LLM, but prediction is clearly tied up with thought in some way. I don’t find LLMs to be very good independent thinkers, but I wouldn’t over sell our own mentation either - it clearly arises from a large number of simpler entit…

    I don’t find LLMs to be very good independent 
    thinkers, but I wouldn’t over sell our own mentation 
    either - it clearly arises from a large number of 
    simpler entities.
Yeah. I don't see them ever hitting the heights of human creativity in terms of coming up with entirely new ideas, schools of thought, etc. That really might be a fundamental limitation of being trained on existing thought. Also, a lot of human experience involves (1) things we don't have words for (2) things we've never put into words.

    clearly an emergent and secondary capability of 
    our own thinking.
Yes. And it's part of our thinking. More than a capability . Thought influences speech, but speech also influences thought.

That's why I think it's remarkable that we've managed to (choosing my words very, very carefully here) create a statistical model that does a remarkably decent job at emulating the behavior of a fragment of that process.

Re: The new rules of context engineering for Claude 5 generation models

#395

Post by the_gipsy »

weregiraffe wrote: post #363
the_gipsy wrote: post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are no movie clips in your brain that you replay. You are re-narrating the scene, you just may not notice it.

Next you gonna say we don't have images in our brain, only descriptions?

Picture your last meal. Is it a picture? Pixel or vector, or like a photo?

Re: The new rules of context engineering for Claude 5 generation models

#396

Post by jochem9 »

throwatdem12311 wrote: post #376
bensonperry wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i mean this is the same thing as self-driving cars and all sorts of technology - humans are our benchmark, being better than a human and cheaper immediately unlocks massive value everywhere. if i can hire a human-level programmer for ~$100 USD per month, that is an incredible upgrade from that costing me ~$10k per month!

Where’s all this supposed value being generated. What software is better? What is cheaper? Nothing. All lies. Everything is actually worse. Programmers got fooled into working harder and getting paid the same, if not less because the job market is so terrible now. Congrats you played yourself. Saying you feel more productive is a worthless measure especially when these things are designed to gas you up and make you f…

Have you seen profits lately? The money is going to the shareholders. You hardly see it in the products you buy (they're the same, just more expensive) or in your wage going up.

This is not (just) AI, but generally speaking that's what's going on. Wage and profit have been out of tune for a long time and it's getting worse. [1]

Specifically on AI: maybe the job market is down because of AI (it plays a part in it). Then that's where the value is at: same output with less developers. Money straight in the pockets of the shareholders.

1. https://www.imf.org/en/blogs/articles/2017/04/12/drivers-of-...

Re: The new rules of context engineering for Claude 5 generation models

#397

Post by nickm12 »

ckolkey wrote: post #178
nickm12 wrote: post #177

During the rise of agentic assistance, I've gotten the advice that "If the generated code isn't what you want, fix the steering, not the code". I've also been advised to not change the sometimes verbose comments and documentation that agents write because "it will help them the next time they look at the code". I've been skeptical and these guidelines validate this. I continue to document code and write specs as I've…

One of the oddities of the comments Claude makes is that they are very referential to the current session, or reference now dead/removed code... Which I consider useless. Things like "implement this X way because it's faster than Y" ... But a human reading the code wouldn't know what Y is, or that it even existed necessarily. So, I find myself constantly fixing comments to be less temporarily dependant.

Yes, I've seen this a bunch too and agree completely. Sometimes I've also see Claude comments reference details about the calling or even code in completely different modules.

There are many reasons I don't like it, but a top one is that it falsely implies that you somehow need to know these details about the removed code/calling code etc to understand this code as its written in this revisions.

Re: The new rules of context engineering for Claude 5 generation models

#398

Post by nickm12 »

adithyassekhar wrote: post #201
nickm12 wrote: post #177

During the rise of agentic assistance, I've gotten the advice that "If the generated code isn't what you want, fix the steering, not the code". I've also been advised to not change the sometimes verbose comments and documentation that agents write because "it will help them the next time they look at the code". I've been skeptical and these guidelines validate this. I continue to document code and write specs as I've…

“Code should be self documenting.” I know cliche but if your code does need to do something it usually doesn’t do or has a complex logic or an edge case where it’s no longer following it’s standard flow, add all those as test cases. If the flow is too complex, inherits from all over the place and you must put that as a comment, ask claude to write a test for that, it’s usually good at those.

I believe both that code should be self-documenting but also that comments and documentation are a critical part of the code. Comments and documentation explain the functional contract of the code and why implementation choices were made.

Even if you have tests for an edge case, a comment inline with the code that explains why this edge case exists and why it is handled the way it is adds value to the code.

Re: The new rules of context engineering for Claude 5 generation models

#399

Post by otabdeveloper4 »

jeremyjh wrote: post #312
Eddy_Viscosity2 wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I see these sorts of debates about LLMs thinking, its rarely a disagreement about what LLMs do. Its almost always over how 'thinking' is defined and the two sides use different definitions but don't actually communicate to each other what those definitions are because they assume the other side is using the same one. The loosest definition of thinking is along the lines of anything that can process information i…

It has nothing to do with thinking or consciousness. There is a common misconception that LLM are simply a "statistical process" that doesn't feature any abstract conception of the tokens it is predicting. There are studies that show that such features do exist - that there is discernible structure built into the weights - and that the process of inference is a very rich one. The statistical process exists but it is…

> that there is discernible structure built into the weights

Yes, this "structure" is but the weights of the glorified logistic regression that's describing an extremely simple statistical process.

Re: The new rules of context engineering for Claude 5 generation models

#400

Post by otabdeveloper4 »

buzzin_ wrote: post #229
otabdeveloper4 wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> sort of crystallized a bit of the human thought process a) LLMs don't think. They predict a most probable sequence of language tokens. Huge difference there. b) Whatever LLMs do doesn't model human behavior whatsoever. LLMs are basically very fancy logistic regressors. I.e., it's a mathematical abstraction first and foremost.

It's amazing that you can predict a counterexample to an open math problem, all without thinking.

Not really, a shitload of "open math problems" are bounded by constraints of simple text processing or heuristic search.

Much of math is just boring routine work.

Post reply on HN