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The user is visibly frustrated

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Re: The user is visibly frustrated

#231

Post by HarHarVeryFunny »

rpcope1 wrote: post #190
aa-jv wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed, 100%. If you cannot formulate a specification, or describe a requirement - or indeed, if you cannot fathom the difference between a spec and a requirement, and why its needed to differentiate these from each other prior to doing a proper design and implementation - then you're going to carry your bad practice into the AI realm and that AI is going to be a force multiplier of your own bad practice. Because you…

I am maybe positing something even stronger: say you had two prompts, both with the same information, one was written in the style of a good paper out of Nature or Science, one written in the style of a bad Twitter post or other kind of mess, even with the same information, I increasingly believe even for the top end models like Opus, the results are at least materially different if not grossly so. I really believe t…

Of course - remember it is not trying to answer your question or do what you ask, just trying to do what it was trained to do which is generate the statistically most likely continuation of your input. Your input sets the tone for the type of response that is statistically likely to follow. Idiots tend to engage with other idiots, and experts tend to seek out experts to talk to .. this is what it has been trained on, and is how it is selecting the best (most likely) “response” (continuation) to your input.

Re: The user is visibly frustrated

#233

Post by itchyouch »

What’s interesting to me is that the conversational nature of the LLM tends to lead folks down an unproductive convo path.

“Don’t do X” is just as useful as telling an infant not to cry.

When an infant cries, we implicitly understand there is a form of discomfort to address (food, diaper, etc).

To me, when a LLM fails, it signals to me that the architecture and structure of the code is problematic and that needs to be addressed.

Any seasoned dev can usually see non-DRY, non-KISS patterns, then will structure an encapsulation around said pattern to address issues.

I’ve found that this same type of refactoring is needed in LLM code to improve its outcomes, of which then it’s capable of overcoming the bugs.

Simply telling the LLM to refactor for cleanliness in between code generation runs will do so much for maintainability.

Re: The user is visibly frustrated

#234

Post by notnaut »

eithed wrote: post #185
notnaut wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you explain how you’d use skills to address the situation that anonzzzies was describing…?

I have a skill for exactly such case! Here's an excerpt :) ``` --- name: evidence-debugging description: > Use when debugging any failing test or bug, investigating unexpected behavior, or tracing the cause of a reported defect. --- # Debugging Discipline ## When to Use - A test is failing and you need to understand why - Behavior is unexpected and the cause is unknown - The user asks you to debug or investigate a de…

Thanks a lot! This is really helpful!

Re: The user is visibly frustrated

#235

Post by dnnddidiej »

da_chicken wrote: post #180
dnnddidiej wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe try vibe coding. Seruously. It is a different beast now and so much better than even when the term was coined by Andrej. I do a lot of work editor-free. Just an agent and PR review on web. Occasional peak with `code .` if needed. If. Try it at home first with a low stakes project. And learn it like a game. It will suck less as time goes on. Like skiing or 10 pin bowling.

Vibe coding a low-stakes personal project is very different from vibe coding a hospital information system or a kernel patch. Learning you can get away with one doesn't mean you should translate that to the other.

It is like tbe pottery parable. Try 100 times on a low stakes project for tacit experience. Get better at it. Then use in prod. In prod - obviously you will have more guardrails and you would probably review all code.

Re: The user is visibly frustrated

#236

Post by dnnddidiej »

zeumo wrote: post #195
dnnddidiej wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe try vibe coding. Seruously. It is a different beast now and so much better than even when the term was coined by Andrej. I do a lot of work editor-free. Just an agent and PR review on web. Occasional peak with `code .` if needed. If. Try it at home first with a low stakes project. And learn it like a game. It will suck less as time goes on. Like skiing or 10 pin bowling.

Genuine question: what's the point of vibe-coding a personal, low-stake project? I do work on such projects, but the main goal for me is to learn, not the end result. If the end result is important, then there it's overwhelmingly likely that someone already implemented it better than I ever would, and I should just use that implementation. I have implemented a qoi codec or a gemini client, not because I needed to use…

In this case to learn the tool. Then project could be anyrhihg. It could be a small CLI utility you dreamed of having for example. A k9s-like to replace those crappy guis you deal with at work maybe?

Re: The user is visibly frustrated

#237

Post by recursive »

scotty79 wrote: post #146
Chance-Device wrote: post #125

We get so angry at LLMs because we can . Without any social or even emotional repercussions for expressing these emotions. If the models actually acted like people in response, we wouldn’t do it. Some of the people I work with daily make similar mistakes, I don’t find myself yelling at them. I think this is simply part of the darker side of human nature, when we interact with entities who will take abuse, we tend to…

I dread people who get abusive with AI, because I know it's only fear that prevents them from being like that with me. Even if only it is the fear of hurting me, it's still terrible because every fear can pass.

I don't understand this at all. If someone hits a nail with a hammer, does that mean they might start hitting people with hammers one day?

I'm not afraid of being abusive with humans because I know I'm not going to do it. That's a thing that's in my control.

Re: The user is visibly frustrated

#238

Post by astrange »

bad_username wrote: post #3

> furiously hammering on my laptop “WHAT THE FUCK DID YOU DO???”. The recipient of these tirades is, you might have guessed, a coding agent. It’s completely pointless, I know. I believe it's worth than pointless. IMO adding such things to the context "configures" the AI to reproduce the statistics of conversations where people swore, shouted, and were unprofessional (despite the alignment runing and all that), where…

That's how a base model would work. An assistant model is simulating a human and behaves the same way a human would if you screamed at them.

https://www.anthropic.com/research/emotion-concepts-function

Re: The user is visibly frustrated

#239

Post by recursive »

apsurd wrote: post #23
ilitirit wrote: post #19

I've often wondered if LLMs can suffer from psychological abuse in symptomatic ways. Not literally of course, but for example, if you berate the LLM by calling it stupid, or useless, does that modify its behaviour negatively? Part of me think it does, but I don't really have any evidence for this. Maybe a fun weekend research topic.

Semi-related, I'm always very put off by how people treat LLMs. Especially coders, seems an instinctive joy comes out to play God. The justification is usually that it's intentionally against the trap of anthropomorphizing, but no I can't help but suspect it's people getting off on power. It's weird. I am always very cordial in my sessions. It's just more pleasant and it's a habit I want to habituate. Great work! Now…

I'm one of these. You might be right about some people, but not all of us.

I would prefer to not interact with them at all. But I've been asked to use them at work. For me, it's important to consistently remind myself that they are not people, and this is one of the ways I do it. There's a risk I might train myself to be a jerk in general. I blame the tool vendors for mimicking human speech patterns.

I find the whole thing distasteful, and there's certainly no joy. In fact, if I ever start to get a sensation of playing God, that would also represent a failure to me. I don't feel like a god when I set my thermostat. They are machines, that unfortunately, communicate superficially like humans.

Re: The user is visibly frustrated

#240

Post by astrange »

Foskya wrote: post #37

> They talk like real people. They use a relaxed and friendly tone. They often praise you, and when they “push back” they’re gentle and attentive. > Maybe I would prefer a more radical solution: drop the human pretense entirely. Make the agent sound clinical, robotic. Honestly this problem is easy to solve when you gave them the right instructions. It stops being a "relationship" and stars being a tool (for some exam…

Do you actually have evidence this works and doesn't degrade performance?
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