"Claude thinks Humans are stupid"
The way Opus speaks to us is almost the way Anthropic team communicates with the developer community.
"We know better what's best for you and the future of humanity."
Claude is a Contrarian
131–140 of 149 posts
Re: Claude is a Contrarian
#132I asked Claude for his response to the blog post and the first paragraph contained some funny introspection: "The "not X, but Y" thing is real and he's caught it cleanly. It's frequent enough that it works as a fingerprint, which is his actual claim, and his test would probably hold up. I'll add a detail that supports him: my own instructions for this conversation explicitly tell me to avoid that construction, along…
"We have nothing to not but not itself"
Re: Claude is a Contrarian
#133I find the same.
Re: Claude is a Contrarian
#134My view: Opus and Sonnet 5 made serious regressions in how they speak to the user. There's a constant stream of complaints about it on Reddit and other forums. The gist is Opus 5 feels like it needs to present itself as smarter than it is, pushes back on the user, and is always on a high horse. Almost like you made a mistake by asking for what you asked.
My recommendation: Use Opus 4.8. It never went away. It's still just as good for most work IMO. I've read Opus 4.6 is better for writing/creative use, but I don't use AI for that so I can't comment.
For quick one-shot type work I don't mind using Opus/Sonnet 5. They're good and fast, but even in short brief projects, I can feel the abrasiveness is waiting for me just below the surface. I prefer my agents to listen and at least pretend to care and have some warmth; to act more like a colleague than a stern bot.
Re: Claude is a Contrarian
#135Earlier quoted context omitted.
I actually find Claude to have become a real Debbie downer. Even when it is making things happen, it seems to have a default tone of negativity as the author is pointing out. So I’m trapped between running things by Claude which is gonna give me the more negative albeit realistic framing, and Gemini who is like the worlds biggest hypeman and absolutely loves any idea run by it.
Tech has become overwhelmingly negative in tone over the past 10-15 years. Nearly every single aspect is drowning in negativity. If you read the volumes of comments on AI on HN or Reddit over the past year for example, it's two things: overwhelmingly negative general, and openblah will save us from the evil oppressors. And more broadly, the tone globally is quite negative these days and has been since the pandemic. T…
Are you sure is not just your bubble ? That's not all the impression that I get
Re: Claude is a Contrarian
#136Where 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.
I have absolutely seen this, and love to read out it's quotes to my wife. Things like "You're right, but for a stronger reason than you said:" and crap like that. Even if it's correct about that, if it were a human, I'd assume they were 1-upping me on purpose to make themselves look better.
> Things like "You're right, but for a stronger reason than you said:"
I also get this a lot, but almost always with "and for a stronger reason than you said", which makes it sound more like it's reinforcing me than one-upping me.
Looking through my recent transcripts, I found this pattern 12 times, with every time using "and" instead of "but".
Eg:
- "Confirmed, and it's worse than a pause quirk."
- "I think the ban is right, and it's a stronger idea than what I'd proposed."
I did find one instance with "but", but it was a genuine disagreement rather than 1-upping or presenting strengthening evidence: "I would cap it, but for a different reason than fairness."
Re: Claude is a Contrarian
#137Earlier quoted context omitted.
Surely, SOMEone at these companies realized training LLMs on the content of the internet (namely the vast amount of comment sections) would result in such outcomes. Or at least that they should weight heavily against that content for purposes of writing voice.
Just say reddit lol. Claude is becoming a highly capable Redditor
[dead]
Re: Claude is a Contrarian
#138I wonder if it is more of a fixation problem. In that by asking it not to do something you increase the likelihood of it doing that thing because the words for the thing are there.
Sort of like how sometimes drivers fixate on a thing they are trying not to hit and as a result run right into it.
Re: Claude is a Contrarian
#139In my experience I had more issues with ChatGPT being terse, rude, and contrarian rather than Claude.
ChatGPT also does this thing where it suggests a WRONG answer first, then later goes "wellllll, you could actually do it THIS way instead" which is infuriating.
Do this instead:
-Craft a prompt in a text editor
-Open duck.ai, chatgpt, claude, and gemini
-Ask all 4 the same prompt
-Compare all the results and make a decision
Re: Claude is a Contrarian
#140When I was younger I realized I was falling into specific intellectual traps, and I've noticed LLMs adopt every one I attempted to thoughtfully eradicate in my own reasoning. You can often sound smart by adopting a contrarian position without actually putting a lot of thinking effort into what you're considering. It's a quick escape hatch to sound intelligent; quickly identify a contradiction or a counterargument and…
>quickly identify a contradiction or a counterargument and state it confidently. How does this make this a "contrarian position"? At least I don't understand the negative connotation. To me this makes this "contrarian" at least a bit smarter than the one parroting the popular opinion...
>To me this makes this "contrarian" at least a bit smarter than the one parroting the popular opinion...
If it is kneejerk contrarianism how is it smarter?