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Same. This works fine for Claude in my experience. My user prompt is fairly large and encourages certain behaviours I want to see, which involves being critical
by steve_adams_86 7mo ago
Same. This works fine for Claude in my experience. My user prompt is fairly large and encourages certain behaviours I want to see, which involves being critical and considering the strengths and weaknesses of ideas before drawing conclusions. As someone else mentioned, there does seem to be a phenomenon where saying DO NOT DO X causes a sort of attention bias on X which can lead to X occurring despite the clear instructions. I've never empirically tested that, I've just noticed better results over the years when telling it what paths to stick to rather than specific things not do to.
- koverstreet 7mo agoThat happens with humans too :) It's why positive feedback that draws attention to the behavior you want to encourage often works better. "Attention" is lower level and more fundamental than reasoning by syllogism.
- magicalhippo 7mo ago> there does seem to be a phenomenon where saying DO NOT DO X causes a sort of attention bias on X which can lead to X occurring despite the clear instructions It's a thing with people too[1], ie do not think about a white bear. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ironic_process_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ironic_process_theory
- steve_adams_86 7mo agoDon't think about what?