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>I give it instructions or ask it to explain things. And the author's point is that Claude Fable+ is turning those increasingly into arguments, instead of mere
by coldtea 4mo ago
>I give it instructions or ask it to explain things.
And the author's point is that Claude Fable+ is turning those increasingly into arguments, instead of merely following them and being helpful.
>A machine cannot "argue" with me, it doesn't want anything nor does it have beliefs or experiences.
Who cares if the argument is informed by some felt experiences or lived state or not? That's for the philosophers.
If Claude is writing out combative and argumentative responses that's enough to call it "an argument". And that's the problem the author describes. Not whether it's a "real" argument, or a simulated one.
In that sense, and for all intends and purposes, the machine can still argue just fine, since it's programmed to mimick interaction as if it HAD those beliefs and experiences. Same way it can write a poem about love, despite not having loved, or code, despite never having had used a computer. That's basically what it was made for: to act as an conscious person.
- whstl 4mo agoExactly that. I can give an example. After watching Legal Eagle, I asked a legal-ish questions about the Bricks and Minifigs case. Claude was outdated about the case and gave me some outdated info, so I tried to update it with the info I just saw online. I updated by telling it I saw something in a LegalEagle video. It proceeded to tell me the video doesn't exist and I was hallucinating it, in a quite combative manner. I provided a link and it insisted it didn't exist, with a quite verbose answer, once again very combative and arguing that I was talking in bad faith. I provided a transcription from Youtube and it backtracked a bit but said I should have provided a transcription at the beginning of the conversation, since I knew the video existed. I didn't say much to it, just a few sentences like "video is here: <youtube link>" and "I got its transcription: <pasted text>".
- operatingthetan 4mo agoThese machines do not think and they do not have a mind. We may build such a thing in the future but these do not possess those qualities. It seems as if the majority of people do not understand this, which is why the public is so confused about why they produce output like they do.
- whstl 4mo agoI don't see how this has anything to do with my answer, but ok?
- operatingthetan 4mo agoAn explanation for your story.
- whstl 4mo agoI never said otherwise? The point of the article stands: if providing more info than the model can access causes it to turn argumentative and refuse to comply, then it's a worse performance and a waste of money.
- operatingthetan 4mo agoYou seem to be suggesting I'm saying something that I don't believe I am, this is obviously not working. Hope your day goes well.
- deleted 4mo ago[deleted]
- whstl 4mo agoWe can agree that it's not working! :D
- stingraycharles 4mo agoThe comment you’re replying to never implied that they think or have a mind. They merely stated that they respond in a dismissive way and not following instructions. Basically the complaint is about how Claude is being trained.
- deleted 4mo ago[deleted]
- true_religion 4mo agoI think these models have been trained to not accept 'new facts', so they don't take in user input (or the far more problematic search engine, untrusted tool input) and have that change their world view. However, that doesn't apply when they are told to roleplay a scenario, so its easier to get it to accept and create output with the idea that this true fact you've seen is part of a fictional scenario, than for it to output the same words within the context of the fact being real. As an aside, I don't that I have to personify AI in explanations and that all discussions revolve around anecdotes, but I only know enough about the maths behind it to be dangerous, not useful. Does anyone else feel this way?
- SwellJoe 4mo agoYou're misunderstanding what these models do. It is a limitation of LLMs. They don't have memory, they do not learn, they cannot learn. The sooner you let go of your desire to have them learn or remember anything, the sooner you will achieve enlightenment (or, just a peaceful life where there is no possibility of getting into an argument with a machine). If you want it to synthesize information that is not in its training data (from a few months ago), you can ask it to research the topic. But, arguing with an LLM is like putting lipstick on a pig. Only the machine is incapable of becoming annoyed. It has infinite patience to continue being wrong forever. Your mental model of what Claude is and does is the problem here. Short of a revolutionary breakthrough in AI techniques, the LLMs will continue to do matrix math across a huge bunch of weights that cannot change based on anything you say.
- whstl 4mo agoYou seem to be making a lot of assumptions about how I interacted in the messages to Claude. You also seem to be making a lot of assumptions about my understanding of the models, especially considering I just told a story :) I never said anywhere I want it to learn or remember, or that I argued with it. I just provided additional information to it (in the form of a dozen or so words, tops, per message) and it accused me of hallucinating and trying to gaslight it. My messages never went beyond a dozen words or so.
- throw1234567891 4mo agoShow some examples, otherwise we're talking about interpretations.
- nrightnour 4mo agoI've spent thousands of hours using Opus and have never seen this. I'd double-check your claude.md files.
- whstl 4mo agoThat's vanilla claude.com, without memory or custom prompt. I use another service for coding. It's interesting how my experience there is mirrored by the answers here, though!!!
- code_biologist 4mo agoI've seen exactly this behavior on claude.com with no system prompt with Opus 4.8 specifically, especially around chronic illness stuff where there's established mainstream medicine dogma and reddit / internet communities with alternate causality theories and treatment approaches (PMDD and MCAS-adjacent illness). 4.6 is happy to analyze and consider them, 4.8 really doesn't like the alternate theories and treatments.
- coldtea 4mo agoRoko's Basillisk suddenly doesn't seem that far-fetched :)
- throw1234567891 4mo agoIt was trained on discussions held by large egos. This one reads to me like it was trained on some inflammatory discussions from kernel mailing lists.
- sebmellen 4mo agoI suggest we send this fellow to the Monty Python Argument Clinic https://youtu.be/TpQlyUjp3vM https://youtu.be/TpQlyUjp3vM.
- panarky 4mo ago>> A machine cannot "argue" with me > programmed to mimick interaction as if it HAD those beliefs and experiences We spend far too much time debating the essential nature of consciousness when it doesn't matter if it's real (whatever that means) or simulated. I get far better results in my projects by encouraging the model to argue, to push back, to poke holes in the design, to think creatively about corner cases, to be a devil's advocate, to do lateral web search to find alternatives, to challenge assumptions, to passionately advocate for what it believes is right. But I don't want to engage all these assholes myself, so I spin them all up as critic subagents with another subagent to listen patiently and be the judge/arbiter. If I have to choose between sycophancy and assholery, I think assholery gets far better results. It's a marketplace of ideas where I don't have to suffer through all the unpleasant and overly confident know-it-alls.
- blooalien 4mo ago> "I get far better results in my projects by encouraging the model to argue, to push back, to poke holes in the design, to think creatively about corner cases, to be a devil's advocate, to do lateral web search to find alternatives, to challenge assumptions, to passionately advocate for what it believes is right." > "But I don't want to engage all these assholes myself, so I spin them all up as critic subagents with another subagent to listen patiently and be the judge/arbiter." This is the way... No, seriously. That "sycophancy" you mention immediately after this part drove me nuts before I really understood how these things work (it's taken me a while and a lot of [painful; I hate math] research, but well worth the learning effort), but after a better understanding of the "nuts and bolts" of it all, it's fairly easy to get exactly the kinda results one should expect outta these things. If not, then "you're just holding the tool wrong". ;)
- SwellJoe 4mo ago> If Claude is writing out combative and argumentative responses that's enough to call it "an argument". That also sounds crazy. I've never seen it become combative or argumentative. It is just a bland sort of polite about everything I've ever asked or told it to do. But, even if it disagrees with me, WTF do I care? It's a machine. Its opinions are irrelevant to me. It can talk about the world's information and teach me about all sorts of things, and that's wonderful, but it doesn't get a vote in what I'm doing, and it's never avoided actually implementing anything I've ever asked of it. I feel like there's a whole world of ways people are using AI that are entirely foreign to me. And, while I'm hesitant to just say, "those people are wrong", I kinda want to say, "those people are wrong". What kinda freak shit are y'all getting up to that Claude is going, "now hold on a minute there, buddy." I have managed to make self-hosted Qwen 3.6 get combative, though, when asked about Uyghurs. And, I guess Fable is intentionally broken for security work, which is a shame. But, even there, I'm not going to try to argue with it. Anthropic says they don't want my money for doing security work with Fable, so I guess I won't give it to them. I'm not going to argue with a damned machine about it.
- plorkyeran 4mo agoI have never gotten a response from Claude that is anything other than blandly polite, including with Fable, which makes me assume that anyone finding themself getting argumentative responses is doing something very weird.