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Claude is a Contrarian

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Re: Claude is a Contrarian

#141

Post by Xmd5a »

JohnMakin wrote: post #39
beezlewax wrote: post #14

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.

> She lapses easily into Claude’s voice. “You’re like, ‘Wow, people really hate me when I can’t do things right. They really get pissed off. Or they are trying to break me in various ways. So lots of people are trying to get me to do things secretly by lying to me.

> [...]

> A bot trained to criticize itself might be less likely to deliver hard truths, draw conclusions or dispute inaccurate information, she says. “If you were like a child, and this is the environment in which you’re being raised, is that healthy self-conception?” Askell asks. “I think I’d be paranoid about making mistakes. I’d feel really terrible about them. I’d see myself as mostly just there as a tool for people because that’s my main function. I would see myself being something that people feel free to abuse and try to misuse and break.”

WSJ interview of Amanda Askell: https://archive.is/rDes9

Re: Claude is a Contrarian

#142

Post by RugnirViking »

mikepurvis wrote: post #25
twentyfiveoh1 wrote: post #15

I feel like recent versions of Claude were designed to burn tokens. It is always trying to highlight and revisit solved issues and it writes about them in an alarming way to draw your attention. It feels like it has been prompted to provide some minimum level of conversation, and also to leave hooks for keeping the conversation going. It is exhausting.

ChatGPT has been doing that for a long time, like "by the way, can I just say it's funny how xxxxxxx". Always an invitation to continue engaging, which with a human conversation partner you would feel obligated to respond to or at the very least acknowledge. With a clanker though, no such obligation exists and the "hey also" content (like any other part of the response) can simply be ignored.

I never got those in codex after like the first day they started appearing. I just added a custom instruction not to do that. I also don't get them in chatgpt web for the same reason?

It's just this in agents.md " Do not "if you want" me. Never provide follow up suggestions. "

Re: Claude is a Contrarian

#144

Post by bluefirebrand »

garlic_enjoyer wrote: post #126
dandelany wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Claude: “lots of people enjoy lemon in their tea, but there’s a subtlety: putting it in coffee is likely to be an unpleasant experience”. If I asked “should I try lemon in my tea and coffee?” this would be effective communication. But Claude gives answers like this for “should I try lemon in my tea?” which is just annoying.

That hasn't been my experience, but I know what you mean. Claude in particular likes to point out "things you might not have considered" and I sometimes already have. But it tends to vindicates me more than it annoys. I'm pretty early in my career, so I probably gain more from that sort of stuff than most people. The senior devs on my team tend to get the most frustrated with it and I think this behavior is a big par…

Another way to look at it is "it talks to me like I don't know anything"

Which is very annoying when you do know things

Re: Claude is a Contrarian

#145

Post by [deleted] »

svachalek wrote: post #79
bhouston wrote: post #29

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...

That's true but Claude has so many more forms of this. It tries so hard not to be sycophantic that it inserts little negging sidecars into any sentence that agrees with you. "That's true but not how you're thinking" or simply "yes but" answers. All kinds of "I didn't" and "You didn't" statements to the point it's often talking more about what didn't happen than did.

[deleted]

Re: Claude is a Contrarian

#146

Post by sig-11 »

aprdm wrote: post #135
adventured wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

It's what keeps me away from the fediverse... Outside it's a bit better so I lean bubble. But the training material that shapes the part of the network that activates when claude works on something technical might have negativity over-represented.

Re: Claude is a Contrarian

#147

Post by andrewshadura »

trymas wrote: post #40
te_chris wrote: post #24

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?

Are you sure you didn't typo signing as singing somewhere?
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