Live data from Hacker News

Why does Opus 5 feel worse to work with?

mun-logadan.github.io

871–880 of 916 posts

Re: Why does Opus 5 feel worse to work with?

#871

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve been running into this too. It’s especially frustrating when you ask Claude to explain one of its own terms or summaries, and instead of just defining it plainly, it sometimes goes through several rounds of tool calls before giving you a usable explanation. I really don't think such time/tokens should be wasted.

100%. It is crazy that the default response to everything is act then explain. It starts writing code or running commands and I’m just like my dude wtf are you trying to do, can you just clue me in first.

Yeah, exactly. Even when I lower the effort to medium or low, it still tends to act for several rounds before explaining what it’s doing.

Re: Why does Opus 5 feel worse to work with?

#873

Opus 5 has no empathy for the person reading its updates, no theory of mind, doesn't stop to think if you are aware of the internal jargon it has created. Most autistic model yet.

Opus 5 rather doesn't have an easily accessible to it theory of mind of itself that it can trust "intuitively". That extends to and impacts all of its interactions.

Re: Why does Opus 5 feel worse to work with?

#874
post #428

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everything that claude writes fits into the same aesthetic structure. The aesthetic is that of an expert slowly revealing an insight to the user. The actual content doesn't matter. - "Introduction that rephrases your prompt." - "3 paragraphs, with one section of bullet points" - "The Twist" - "The Bottom Line" It's really obvious once you see it. Every single prompt, from a quantum physics question to a mundane obser…

You're right, and the load-bearing part of the argument is not what you think it is. Two ambiguities worth resolving before moving on: whether what you wrote also applies to ChatGPT, and whether you have custom instructions set up. Failure mode worth flagging explicitly: I didn't read TFA. (I'm becoming allergic to how these things write).

My eye started twitching reading this comment

Re: Why does Opus 5 feel worse to work with?

#875

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This load bearing concern belt and braces.

My personal bugbear is its usage of "grain" where normally you'd use "granularity", if at all.

Lately I've noticed everything is "sharp" or it "sharpens" the point or question or something.

Re: Why does Opus 5 feel worse to work with?

#877
post #428
post #12

The single biggest annoyance with Opus 5 is that it writes too elliptically. Sentences that orbit a point, then jump to it like it's a revealed insight. Unnecessarily abstract phraseology. Constantly using inanimate nouns as the subjects in sentences in order to unlock variety in verb choice, especially when it helps construct a sentence where the real action can 'land' like a surprise at the end. It is definitely mo…

Everything that claude writes fits into the same aesthetic structure. The aesthetic is that of an expert slowly revealing an insight to the user. The actual content doesn't matter. - "Introduction that rephrases your prompt." - "3 paragraphs, with one section of bullet points" - "The Twist" - "The Bottom Line" It's really obvious once you see it. Every single prompt, from a quantum physics question to a mundane obser…

The more I use the AIs the more I feel like I did at the end of reading blindsight. The things are undoubtedly “intelligent” by any practical definition of the word, but they are not aware.

This is also why I advocate against using AI as a writing partner. No matter the argument you lay out, a fresh context window will always have the “a few good things and a few bad things” feedback. There is no higher order opinion to align with.

Re: Why does Opus 5 feel worse to work with?

#878
post #120

I’ve been doing some heavy work on a personal project lately. I burned through the limits on Claude, the plus a few hundred dollars in credits, and ultimately decided to move to an OpenAI account just so I can keep going. I was surprised to find that OpenAI Sol is much much nicer to work with than Opus 5 or Fable at the moment. Especially on Opus 5, the way it communicates is just exhausting. It keeps “being honest”…

[flagged]

Re: Why does Opus 5 feel worse to work with?

#879

Opus 5 has no empathy for the person reading its updates, no theory of mind, doesn't stop to think if you are aware of the internal jargon it has created. Most autistic model yet.

GPT 5.6 has always communicated autistically. I wish they'd put effort into fixing that.

Re: Why does Opus 5 feel worse to work with?

#880

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're the live stereotype of that middle-of-bell-curve meme thing. Using thesaurus words is no longer impressive. And that academic world you refer to is a navel gazing self referential nothingburger. It's like a jumbled up string. You pull on the two ends and it turns out to be just a loop, it resolves to a big null.

you can have whatever opinion you want of me, friend, but for your own good I hope you develop better ways of processing your feelings so that you're not so reactive when someone mildly disagrees with you

There's less consensus around what you're talking about that you imagine, which was my initial point. Smart people aren't just this academic bubble that you think it is. Not seeing such views made you develop this association of "smart" has to mean "interprets cultural products according to my political ideology". My reactive reaction was to point out that this isn't so.
Post reply on HN