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Highlights from the Claude 4 system prompt

simonwillison.net

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Re: Highlights from the Claude 4 system prompt

#71

Post by aaroninsf »

beAbU wrote: post #60
weego wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The world now believes that em-dashes are a sign of AI, I guess because it's seen as slightly archaic due to over use of the comma.

> slightly archaic How are em-dashes "slightly" archaic in this context? Can you point me to a single example of internet discourse from the last 30 years where a human used an em-dash unironically? Academic papers doesn't count, literature doesn't count. I'm looking for an example of human created discourse online. The crux of the allegation is that normal meatbag humans don't use an em-dash when conversing with one…

I use and have used em-dashes my entire life, including online e.g. on Reddit, Slack, and here.

My wife and numerous friends our age do the same.

Among those who studied English at e.g. a college level it's a natural and not uncommon part of professional writing... even online.

At least for those of us old enough to still punctuate and capitalize our texts.

Re: Highlights from the Claude 4 system prompt

#72

Post by svat »

beAbU wrote: post #60
weego wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The world now believes that em-dashes are a sign of AI, I guess because it's seen as slightly archaic due to over use of the comma.

> slightly archaic How are em-dashes "slightly" archaic in this context? Can you point me to a single example of internet discourse from the last 30 years where a human used an em-dash unironically? Academic papers doesn't count, literature doesn't count. I'm looking for an example of human created discourse online. The crux of the allegation is that normal meatbag humans don't use an em-dash when conversing with one…

Surely this is an absurd exaggeration. I've been using em dashes everywhere (online comments, email, chat) for ~25 years now. I'm not unusual in this regard; everyone who cares about punctuation probably uses them liberally. They're not hard to type; on macOS you can hold down Alt and Shift while hitting the `-`, and on Android you can long press on the `-`. Maybe they're used less by Windows users?

Even just looking at my HN comments, 381 of my ~1200 HN comments so far (so >30%) have em dashes. This includes my very first comment on HN from 2009 (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=602094) and several that have multiple em dashes in them:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15169281 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15899499 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16596894 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17291032 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17464621 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18201613 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18331591 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18387981 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18843521

(and so on; all these are from 2019 or earlier, preceding GPT-3.)

Re: Highlights from the Claude 4 system prompt

#73

Post by wafflemaker »

gusmally wrote: post #66
xela79 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm using this custom instruction in a "project" folder for "absolute" mode to cut the crap and fluff: System Instruction: Absolute Mode. Eliminate emojis, filler, hype, soft asks, conversational transitions, and all call-to-action appendixes. Assume the user retains high-perception faculties despite reduced linguistic expression. Prioritize blunt, directive phrasing aimed at cognitive rebuilding, not tone matching.…

> Model obsolescence by user self-sufficiency is the final outcome. What does this mean? "Obsolescence" just in the case of the topic at hand?

Not OP, but guessing it means that it's to teach the user to be so knowledgeable, that s/he doesn't need the LLM anymore.

Re: Highlights from the Claude 4 system prompt

#74

Post by Oreb »

beAbU wrote: post #60
weego wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The world now believes that em-dashes are a sign of AI, I guess because it's seen as slightly archaic due to over use of the comma.

> slightly archaic How are em-dashes "slightly" archaic in this context? Can you point me to a single example of internet discourse from the last 30 years where a human used an em-dash unironically? Academic papers doesn't count, literature doesn't count. I'm looking for an example of human created discourse online. The crux of the allegation is that normal meatbag humans don't use an em-dash when conversing with one…

I’ve used em-dashes in all sorts of online forums for decades. It’s on the Mac keyboard, and there are also tons of tools that automatically convert double or triple dashes to a single long dash. They were never uncommon.

Re: Highlights from the Claude 4 system prompt

#75

Post by PaulRobinson »

beAbU wrote: post #60
weego wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The world now believes that em-dashes are a sign of AI, I guess because it's seen as slightly archaic due to over use of the comma.

> slightly archaic How are em-dashes "slightly" archaic in this context? Can you point me to a single example of internet discourse from the last 30 years where a human used an em-dash unironically? Academic papers doesn't count, literature doesn't count. I'm looking for an example of human created discourse online. The crux of the allegation is that normal meatbag humans don't use an em-dash when conversing with one…

MS Office will insert em-dashes automatically in most documents, so in fact there are a lot of Word docs and Outlook emails that contain them.

I sometimes specifically try and trigger them: if you have a piece of text and go back to insert a hyphen, it won't em-dash until you've followed it with a space, another word and then another space. I now sort of end up doing '- x ' and then backspacing so that the word following the x now follows an em-dash.

They exist to provide clarity. The are not hyphens, or en-dashes, they're em-dashes. The fact that some people have forgotten how to use them (or perhaps not been taught), does not make them "archaic", it makes those people who find them as such to be ignorant of basic sentence structure and punctuation.

I think if you're under the age of 30 and you suddenly start using them, you're showing your GenAI a little too much, but the answer is not to get your AI to stop using them, but for us to teach people why they exist and to use them more often when and where they are appropriate.

Re: Highlights from the Claude 4 system prompt

#76

Post by pmarreck »

waterhouse wrote: post #70
beAbU wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> slightly archaic How are em-dashes "slightly" archaic in this context? Can you point me to a single example of internet discourse from the last 30 years where a human used an em-dash unironically? Academic papers doesn't count, literature doesn't count. I'm looking for an example of human created discourse online. The crux of the allegation is that normal meatbag humans don't use an em-dash when conversing with one…

I learned how to type em-dashes on Mac (option-shift-hyphen) 10+ years ago and have been using them with some frequency since then. Picking 2023, here are some comments with emdashes that I personally typed: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38796943 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36916740 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36125055 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34487782

I have a Mac (and am very familiar with all its nifty shortcuts) but also a Windows and Linux machine, how would one type it on those?

Re: Highlights from the Claude 4 system prompt

#77

Post by thamer »

ionwake wrote: post #52
zukzuk wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you have against em-dashes!?

He wants to avoid people noticing he is copy pasting from the llm

They're not just from AI-generated text. Some of us humans use en dashes and em dashes in the right context, since they're easy to type on macOS: alt+hyphen and alt+shift+hyphen respectively.

On both iOS and modern Android I believe you can access them with a long press on hyphen.

Re: Highlights from the Claude 4 system prompt

#78

Post by dialup_sounds »

pmarreck wrote: post #76
waterhouse wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I learned how to type em-dashes on Mac (option-shift-hyphen) 10+ years ago and have been using them with some frequency since then. Picking 2023, here are some comments with emdashes that I personally typed: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38796943 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36916740 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36125055 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34487782

I have a Mac (and am very familiar with all its nifty shortcuts) but also a Windows and Linux machine, how would one type it on those?

Word and Outlook auto-replace double hyphens "--" with em-dashes "—", which is probably the most commonly used way on Windows.

Re: Highlights from the Claude 4 system prompt

#79

Post by sunshowers »

pmarreck wrote: post #76
waterhouse wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I learned how to type em-dashes on Mac (option-shift-hyphen) 10+ years ago and have been using them with some frequency since then. Picking 2023, here are some comments with emdashes that I personally typed: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38796943 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36916740 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36125055 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34487782

I have a Mac (and am very familiar with all its nifty shortcuts) but also a Windows and Linux machine, how would one type it on those?

The compose key works well on Linux. Typically mapped to right alt, compose-hyphen-hyphen-hyphen produces an em dash. (hyphen-hyphen-period produces an en dash.)

Re: Highlights from the Claude 4 system prompt

#80

Post by smusamashah »

merksittich wrote: post #49
mns wrote: post #31

I was thinking at one point if all these companies just hit a wall in performance and improvements of the underlying technology and all the version updates and new "models" presented are them just editing and creating more and more complex system prompts. We're also working internally with Copilot and whenever some Pm spots some weird result, we end up just adding all kind of edge case exceptions to our default promp…

Speaking of performance wall: The Claude 4 results were added to the Aider LLM Leaderboard [0] yesterday. Opus 4 is clearly below Gemini 2.5 Pro at almost twice the price. Sonnet 4 fares worse than Sonnet 3.7, with the thinking version of Sonnet 4 being somewhat cheaper than its 3.7 counterpart. [0] https://aider.chat/docs/leaderboards/

There might be 4.1 soon to make up for it's shortcomings.
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