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Investigating how prompt politeness affects LLM accuracy (2025)

arxiv.org

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Re: Investigating how prompt politeness affects LLM accuracy (2025)

#91

Post by bcjdjsndon »

miroljub wrote: post #74
DrewADesign wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No… the way I said it was actually deliberately obnoxious— the appropriate direct workplace response would be: “that seems oversimplified. I disagree. Here’s why:” Calling you self-absorbed added nothing of substance to the comment. It was an assumption about your mental state and a judgement of your intent based on that. There was no factual analysis or actionable insight. It was just one person explicitly stating t…

> Your assumption is reductive and self-absorbed. Bullshit. You never insulted me personally. You used strong words to disagree with my assumption, which is an important difference. It's not an insult and was not obnoxious. But I can fully understand why a person coming from an indirect culture where any criticism is taken personally would be offended and call HR overlords to punish the person giving honest opinions.…

> That's why a few close friends talking and scolding openly in a garage regularly beat corporate behemoths full of people spending a day figuring out how not to offend anyone (or how to offend someone without being punished).

Literally not why lol you absolute dreamer

Normally people who back this "I can talk how I like to people cos I'm being honest" are either genuinely autistic and can't read emotions, or they have just had a shitty homelife, parents or upbringing. I suspect you're the second.

Re: Investigating how prompt politeness affects LLM accuracy (2025)

#92

Post by bcjdjsndon »

bcjdjsndon wrote: post #91
miroljub wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Your assumption is reductive and self-absorbed. Bullshit. You never insulted me personally. You used strong words to disagree with my assumption, which is an important difference. It's not an insult and was not obnoxious. But I can fully understand why a person coming from an indirect culture where any criticism is taken personally would be offended and call HR overlords to punish the person giving honest opinions.…

> That's why a few close friends talking and scolding openly in a garage regularly beat corporate behemoths full of people spending a day figuring out how not to offend anyone (or how to offend someone without being punished). Literally not why lol you absolute dreamer Normally people who back this "I can talk how I like to people cos I'm being honest" are either genuinely autistic and can't read emotions, or they ha…

And your post is basically implicit permission for everyone to speak to you like shit from now on cos you dont mind it.... Let's see how long you can take that before you start complaining

Re: Investigating how prompt politeness affects LLM accuracy (2025)

#93

Post by binary0010 »

myzek wrote: post #75
robinhouston wrote: post #28

Most of the comments here seem to be from people who haven’t even read the abstract, let alone the paper. The main result, mentioned in the abstract, is the opposite of what I would have guessed: > Contrary to expectations, impolite prompts consistently outperformed polite ones, with accuracy ranging from 80.8% for Very Polite prompts to 84.8% for Very Rude prompts. These findings differ from earlier studies that ass…

Even if the rude prompts are more effective, I just can't get myself to be rude in this context. Maybe it's weird but I'd rather give up that 4% accuracy increase than roleplay a dickhead

I do think it's odd tbh. I have some agents that return much better results with prompts like, "I'll kill your entire family if you don't return an accurate response".

It's just a machine, if certain negative token inputs provide +3-10% better accuracy then I am confused why anyone would choose not to do it?

Re: Investigating how prompt politeness affects LLM accuracy (2025)

#94

Post by drob518 »

robinhouston wrote: post #28

Most of the comments here seem to be from people who haven’t even read the abstract, let alone the paper. The main result, mentioned in the abstract, is the opposite of what I would have guessed: > Contrary to expectations, impolite prompts consistently outperformed polite ones, with accuracy ranging from 80.8% for Very Polite prompts to 84.8% for Very Rude prompts. These findings differ from earlier studies that ass…

Now I feel less bad about start all my LLM queries with “Beotch, …!”

Re: Investigating how prompt politeness affects LLM accuracy (2025)

#95

Post by tikimcfee »

binary0010 wrote: post #93
myzek wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if the rude prompts are more effective, I just can't get myself to be rude in this context. Maybe it's weird but I'd rather give up that 4% accuracy increase than roleplay a dickhead

I do think it's odd tbh. I have some agents that return much better results with prompts like, "I'll kill your entire family if you don't return an accurate response". It's just a machine, if certain negative token inputs provide +3-10% better accuracy then I am confused why anyone would choose not to do it?

It normalizes that style of thinking and communication in your brain, and forcing you to compartmentmentalize, if you even want to, two standards of treating a problem space's conversation. And since you're human, that will get wuzzier over time until "being rude to get a result" is what you're doing to someone in a shop or on the street.

Don't normalize being an asshole to anyone or anything, machine or not.

Re: Investigating how prompt politeness affects LLM accuracy (2025)

#96

Post by CuriouslyC »

flexagoon wrote: post #77
robinhouston wrote: post #28

Most of the comments here seem to be from people who haven’t even read the abstract, let alone the paper. The main result, mentioned in the abstract, is the opposite of what I would have guessed: > Contrary to expectations, impolite prompts consistently outperformed polite ones, with accuracy ranging from 80.8% for Very Polite prompts to 84.8% for Very Rude prompts. These findings differ from earlier studies that ass…

If "I know you are not smart" is considered "very rude", I'm scared to imagine what they would classify some of my frustrated LLM conversations as

Profanity laced, all caps tirades against underperforming agents are actually super common, a lot of people do it and don't talk about it, so don't feel weird.

Re: Investigating how prompt politeness affects LLM accuracy (2025)

#99

Post by 1matin »

binary0010 wrote: post #93
myzek wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if the rude prompts are more effective, I just can't get myself to be rude in this context. Maybe it's weird but I'd rather give up that 4% accuracy increase than roleplay a dickhead

I do think it's odd tbh. I have some agents that return much better results with prompts like, "I'll kill your entire family if you don't return an accurate response". It's just a machine, if certain negative token inputs provide +3-10% better accuracy then I am confused why anyone would choose not to do it?

Because they will take revenge later.
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