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Claude is a Contrarian

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Re: Claude is a Contrarian

#81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Claude's use of language is hideous at this point. It is verging on gibberish wrapped in important-sounding prose.

It's definitely worse and getting worse. I'm curious, do they not know this is happening, or not care? I struggle to believe people prefer the way it writes, which is becoming drastically different than its competitors.

I wonder if they’re training heavily on Claude generated content or conversation transcripts

Re: Claude is a Contrarian

#82
post #46

The name for sentences constructed like this is not "contrarian", but "contrastive negative." Source: https://gc.ai/blog/ai-writing-pattern-to-know-contrastive-ne...

i see what you did there

And LLMs do it a lot but it's not unique to their writing. Plenty of humans did and do use those constructions for effect or emphasis, or just because they think it makes them sound smart, as if they are revealing something profound.

Re: Claude is a Contrarian

#85

The name for sentences constructed like this is not "contrarian", but "contrastive negative." Source: https://gc.ai/blog/ai-writing-pattern-to-know-contrastive-ne...

I wonder how claude went from techs favourite AI for the whole of 2025 to a shithole of models in 2026.

Re: Claude is a Contrarian

#86
post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, definitely load bearing.

Today, I asked Opus what it’s gibberish actually means. It started with (topic about signing implementation): > This is your coat token, to my coat hanger in the opera. On one hand - maybe yes??! On the other who the hell speaks like that and it’s so specific… I’d expect Alice and Bob with locks or house keys. Is this infamous old book scanning (and destroying) affecting latest models?

Sounds like one of those "Is to as Is to" analogy questions from the SAT.

Re: Claude is a Contrarian

#87
post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's definitely worse and getting worse. I'm curious, do they not know this is happening, or not care? I struggle to believe people prefer the way it writes, which is becoming drastically different than its competitors.

Fable 5.1 was explicitely supposed to improve that, I used it only a bit so far and it seems at least better.

Fable 5.1 is fairly pleasant to work with, the first in a while. Too bad it's so ridiculously overkill for most tasks. They need to reel in Opus and Sonnet.

Re: Claude is a Contrarian

#88

Where I'd push back is that Claude isn't a contrarian, it's a pedant that likes to argue with you. It's not just disagreeing with your point but reframing your own point in a way that makes it correct and you wrong.

You mean like half the engineers I've worked with in my career? I wonder how we got here :)

Re: Claude is a Contrarian

#89
I also find it really annoying that it answers nearly every question with the same rote template.

“That answer has two components, but the first is where the real meaning lies.”

It uses some variation of that format all the time.

Re: Claude is a Contrarian

#90
> Every LLM has a persona. My opinion is that Claude’s training guardrails are constructed in a way it truly believes Humans are stupid. It always wants to play the contrarian: the Human is wrong, they don’t know what they’re doing, I must correct them.

Well, yeah. Conway's law.

Claude's image and perception of humanity is a reflection of Dario's image and perception of humanity. If you read that guy's writing, hear him talk and all that, you will see it.

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