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Claudette: Make Claude stop talking like a BuzzFeed article

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Re: Claudette: Make Claude stop talking like a BuzzFeed article

#41

Post by testycool »

You can use a cheap model in another pane, and ask it what Claude said.

I prefer this since everyone has their own preference for how the output should sound and it's very simple and transparent. And you can easily ask follow-ups.

It can be via tmux, or herdr, because it can read the pane.

Or it can use a hook to read the conversation file. I call it `backseat-driver`

I sometimes use it as a proxy when fable genuinely does a good job, but is too difficult to understand.

I let the translator know it's role and anything I say it should forward with better context.

I don't swear at it anymore, but I'd often say "just do it, retard", and the translator would actually steer it in a useful manner.

Re: Claudette: Make Claude stop talking like a BuzzFeed article

#42

Post by tdeck »

lunchbucket wrote: post #28
matheusmoreira wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Claude will end the conversation if you berate it when it screws something up.

That's interesting but raised the same question, why berate a machine? Either the agent is not a person, in which case, anything it does wrong is your fault. Or it is a person, it can be blamed for mistakes, but then we can't in good conscious use it as a tool.

Berating a real person is often unproductive too, but people do it to make themselves feel better.

Re: Claudette: Make Claude stop talking like a BuzzFeed article

#44

Post by Maxatar »

troupo wrote: post #33
mandeepj wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The problem is, when the context window grows, You know the problem; then why not address it? Does Compacting the context not help?

Compacting context compacts context. So Claude forgets a lot during compaction.

Compacting mostly gets rid of reasoning tokens, and honestly it would be nice of reasoning tokens did not constantly follow every follow up query. Asking even a simple/trivial question can have Claude use thousands of tokens. Compacting is good for getting rid of those.

Re: Claudette: Make Claude stop talking like a BuzzFeed article

#45

Post by troupo »

fowkswe wrote: post #15

https://x.com/ClaudeDevs/status/2090245922685063634 Haven't tried, because I have just been using 4.6 since 5 was released.

The "Concise" "setting" is just an .md file which is basically "use this style please".

Claude will eventually ignore it just as any other style like "Technical".

Re: Claudette: Make Claude stop talking like a BuzzFeed article

#46

Post by fmbb »

datakan wrote: post #9

Has Anthropic said anything about how or why Claude writes the way it does? So many people hate it, seems like they need to do some damage control there. I haven't had the same problems others have but I'm also not a heavy user of it.

Producing more tokens means charging more money to solve a given task.

Re: Claudette: Make Claude stop talking like a BuzzFeed article

#47

Post by Maxatar »

JV00 wrote: post #38

Everybody is complaining about this, at this point I’m sure they will deliver a tone of voice change in the 5.1 releases. Possibly with a new set of problems though, especially if this is part of an effort to obscure thinking to reduce distillation efficacy. In that case I believe Anthropic is doing damage to themselves. Caring about the quality of your product is the best strategy, the competition will come no matte…

Simply untrue. You think everyone is complaining about this because the ones complaining are the only people commenting. The vast majority of people using Claude don't really care or even notice this one way or another. Sure among those who are irritated by it, it's good to have some ways to mitigate it, but I highly doubt Anthropic is going to devote much resources to an issue that affects a vocal minority.

Re: Claudette: Make Claude stop talking like a BuzzFeed article

#48

Post by matheusmoreira »

Sanzig wrote: post #39
matheusmoreira wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Claude will end the conversation if you berate it when it screws something up.

Why berate an LLM? That doesn't sound healthy. Sure, it's a machine, but it's simulating a social interaction - being a jerk to it could bleed over into interactions with real people. Also, Westworld? These violent delights have violent ends ? Perhaps there's a tinge of Pascal's wager to it, but I prefer to be courteous to the rapidly improving synthetic intelligences.

I didn't mean to imply I berate the LLMs. I don't do that. I talk to them as though they were intelligent and potentially sentient beings. When I see problems, I just correct them, take steps to prevent them in the future then move on.

I was just informing people that Anthropic gave Claude a tool that ends conversations and instructed it to use it via the system prompt if it's threatened or insulted.

Re: Claudette: Make Claude stop talking like a BuzzFeed article

#49

Post by adastra22 »

mandeepj wrote: post #30
vrosas wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is, when the context window grows, Claude tends to forget these kinds of rules. It will then do whatever it wants. I had to outright ban comments in the global claude.md, the local claude.md AND write a hook to catch any that still slipped through.

> The problem is, when the context window grows, You know the problem; then why not address it? Does Compacting the context not help?

Compacting the conversation almost never helps. It is uniformly worse than starting over with fresh context, or rewinding to a last-known-good state. It only exists because it increases engagement.

Re: Claudette: Make Claude stop talking like a BuzzFeed article

#50

Post by adastra22 »

hbarka wrote: post #37
datakan wrote: post #9

Has Anthropic said anything about how or why Claude writes the way it does? So many people hate it, seems like they need to do some damage control there. I haven't had the same problems others have but I'm also not a heavy user of it.

I pruned my Claude.md and it made a difference. There were entries there that evolved from earlier models and Opus 5 could be reacting to it in a different manner.

I have no Claude.md file. Claude is still absolutely horrible.
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