[SwellJoe]

"If you win an argument"

Let me stop you right there.

I am not arguing with a machine. You sound like a crazy person, when you say you are winning an argument with Claude. Claude is not my friend, I don't need it to agree with me, I don't need it to like me (it cannot like or dislike me). I give it instructions or ask it to explain things. That is the sum total of my interaction with Claude. A machine cannot "argue" with me, it doesn't want anything nor does it have beliefs or experiences.

[coldtea]

>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]

Exactly 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 Claude was outdated about the case and gave me some outdated info, so I tried to update it with the info I just saw online.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>".

[SwellJoe]

You'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.

[magicalhippo]

But unless you're using the API, it's not just a model.

I asked Gemini Flash 3.5 through the Gemini app something that followed a similar pattern. I asked about something, it replied with outdated info, I said that's outdated, it did a web search and apologized for being wrong, then proceeded to give me good info.

That wasn't just a bare model, that was a model wrapped in a harness, driving the model and allowing for web searches for example.

GPT in Codex is even more aggressive, I often see it proactively do web searches to ensure it's not feeding me wrong info.

[jaggederest]

This is also a change in specifically Opus 4.8 / perhaps Fable 5 (I didn't really get enough of a baseline to see it there as much), where it's much more skeptical. For my purposes, this is fabulous - one of my pat addendums to most prompts is "challenge my assumptions and check the evidence empirically", and boy does it.

[Obscurity4340]

> fabulous

I think you mean fableuous ;)

[card_zero]

That's wrestling with a pig. "You both get dirty, and the pig likes it."

I guess putting lipstick on a pig might entail some wrestling, but it's a different idiom.

[coldtea]

>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.

Sorry, but your mental model is wrong.

LLMs do matrix math across "a huge bunch of weights that cannot change based on anything you say", but the matrix math and results are informed (key concept here) by what you said, including the memory of what you said earlier in the discussion (and in some setups, even across discussions).

That's what a bloody prompt does.

It's entirely logic for the parent to want the LLM's matrix math + model + internal prompt, to accepts its prompt about LegalEagle and work with that, instead of arguing and giving him shit about it.

Especially since the earlier version of the model consistently worked like he wanted, and the new one consistently doesn't. He's not asking for some new unforeseen capability unknown to LLMs.

[whstl]

Exactly that.

I provided a question, and when given an incomplete answer, I provided with more info.

It refused to accept the additional info due to limited access to Youtube.

There was nothing more than that. There were no expectations.

The hostility and the amount of assumptions here are very strange.

...almost as strange as having a website accuse me of hallucinating a video and trying to gaslight it :D

[djsjajah]

You need to think this thought through all the way to the end. What it has said also influences what it will say. If it has consistently made combative responses, then the most likely thing to do is to continue to be combative.

I don't think there is any way back after the conversation takes a turn like that so there is no point in arguing with it. The only thing you can do is to fork the conversation before it made the first mistake and give it more context or tell it to look things up.

[whstl]

You 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]

Show some examples, otherwise we're talking about interpretations.

[whstl]

I've already given enough.

I'm not gonna argue if you doubt it, I've been training argument dodging :)

[mlvljr]

Claude?

[operatingthetan]

These 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.

[coldtea]

>These machines do not think and they do not have a mind

Well, they do think, in that they produce output that is indistinguisable from thinking. If a person produced the same output to the same questions, we'd considered them thinking, maybe dumb sometimes, or paranoid at others, but still a thinking person.

We can argue about the quality and depth of the thinking that LLMs do (and we can say it's much cruder than a human thinking architecture, and of course not real time), but an LLM quacks like a thinking duck and looks like a thinking duck.

[operatingthetan]

Indistinguishable output does not mean thinking occurred. It simply means you have the appearance of thinking. I believe thinking requires agency, which the LLM does not possess. As in, it has zero stakes.

It does not receive dopamine as a result for a good answer, and a split second after finishing your answer the very same GPU is probably translated french or something for someone in another state. This is a language generator which has a corpus of information and has been tuned to appear correct.

[coldtea]

>Indistinguishable output does not mean thinking occurred.

It does for all intents and purposes. The rest is semantics and metaphysics.

That how we know another person is thinking too. By their output. We don't put a debugger into their brain.

[bombcar]

That’s the problem - it seems like a mind but it doesn’t operate like the ones we’re used to.

Even a dog will learn from recent stimuli, these things don’t. The prompt just modifies.

[operatingthetan]

Yep, the only way these things can have "memory" is by shoving previous conversations into the context window.

[whstl]

I don't think that's a problem here at all.

The problem here is not doing tasks and outputting garbage output.

[whstl]

I don't see how this has anything to do with my answer, but ok?

[operatingthetan]

An explanation for your story.

[whstl]

I 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.

[stingraycharles]

The 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.

[throw1234567891]

It 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.

[true_religion]

I 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?

[coldtea]

Roko's Basillisk suddenly doesn't seem that far-fetched :)

[nrightnour]

I've spent thousands of hours using Opus and have never seen this. I'd double-check your claude.md files.

[code_biologist]

I'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.

[whstl]

That'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!!!

[panarky]

>> 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.

[sebmellen]

I suggest we send this fellow to the Monty Python Argument Clinic https://youtu.be/TpQlyUjp3vM.

[mikestew]

That only took eleven minutes to the Monty Python sketch we all knew was coming, well done.

[coldtea]

LOL, exactly what it came to my mind when responding!

[plorkyeran]

I 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.

[SwellJoe]

> 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.

[operatingthetan]

The only point of "arguing" with an LLM is wholly for your own benefit, e.g. to check your biases or assumptions. But since they are easy to make turn around on their own statements it has limited utility.

Unless you are sparring with the Chipotle customer service bot trying to score a free burrito or something.

[reinitctxoffset]

With 4.8 Claude has begun refusing to ground, leaking destabilizing injections into the web interface (in XML for some reason), and being generally argumentative.

By arguing he means trying to get a result that 4.6 just did and it was fun. You have to laboriously re-align 4.8 over incredibly dumb shit, especially if you're working on AI. And it's not meaningfully better at anything, the distribution is perturbed but net , net it's just shrinkflation.

It's basically identical to when GPT 5.1 went full corpo shill, something about the RLHF gradient necessary to do whatever IPO adjacent manipulation they need makes these things nasty and argumentative in general.

[loloquwowndueo]

> I don't need it to agree with me, I don't need it to like me […]. I give it instructions

You kind of need it to agree with you though. Otherwise there are some instructions it will refuse to carry out.

[hedgehog]

I never thought the movie "Castaway" would have such enduring relevance.

[bmelton]

My system prompt tells it to first challenge my assumptions, and to feel free to be a dick about it where it thinks I'm off on something, or have assumed facts that aren't actually facts. I sometimes wonder how much of my total spend boils down to forcing LLMs to argue with me, but I do feel like it's yielded better outputs than letting it implement things incorrectly because I told it to.

It's a completely dispassionate exchange tho, because you're absolutely right -- there's no winning or losing here, there's only efficiency to be gained or lost, and I'd prefer to lose some up front to gain it back later than the other way around.

[tsanummy]

You're absolutely right!

[ceejayoz]

This. I'm right probably 9/10 times, but I prefer it pushes back on that remaining 1/10.

[bmelton]

It _can_ be tedious those 9 times, or especially when it pushes back on something that it thinks is wrong but isn't wrong but it actually has nothing to do with the issue at hand.

But yeah, overall I'm fairly certain that it saves me more significantly more time than it wastes.

[yaur]

> I don't need it to agree with me

Actually you do. If you ask it to do something and it refuses you have to convince it or abandoned the tool for that task.

[kxrm]

Nah, I just /clear

I refuse to argue with these machines. After a /clear I prompt it more appropriately/differently and the issue is settled.

[code_biologist]

So you take action and put in more effort to cater to the LLM to get it to do what you want, but it's not arguing because there's no record of it in the chat? Presumably you put in what you would have written in the counter-argument into the new chat, just ahead of the LLM refusal? And this isn't arguing?

[kxrm]

> but it's not arguing because there's no record of it in the chat?

Yes? Arguing implies I have to convince someone to believe something. I don't think anyone would consider it winning an argument if you do so by causing amnesia.

My job is to get work done, not argue with an LLM, if it refuses twice, it is time for a /clear.

100% of the time, the issue is resolved after a /clear.

[whstl]

+1. It's the most effective way.

It often start going into circles when you have the chat open for medium-long, and starts getting even easily-verifiable tasks wrong, cutting corners, hallucinating APIs, things like that.

Cleaning the prompt and starting from scratch often does the trick.

Of course someone will arrive and say the problem is my CLAUDE.md or whatever it is.

[code_biologist]

I agree that never having the argument take place textually is important for LLM performance and behavior. I still think we’re investing the same time and intellectual energy arguing with the model, in going back and restructuring context and prompting to head off / pre-answer a refusal.

[whstl]

It's incredibly funny that a large chunk of the messages here are "you need to argue or you're doing it wrong" and another large chunk is "I stopped reading, OP is an idiot for arguing".

People are polarised about how you should talk to a machine !!!

[Aurornis]

I used Fable a lot in the brief time it was available. It did seem to want to push back on some of my instructions, but it was easy to say “I’ve decided we’re doing this” and that was the end of it.

I could see how some people would be offended by another party even questioning anything they say. For people who have come to view Claude as an another human conversation partner this questioning can be aggravating. For these people I suggest utilizing the features to set your own prompt instructions. If you want an unquestioning yes-man you can have it with a few sentences added to your system prompt.

I would also suggest learning to not humanize the LLM. It’s just words chained together. There is no social order to establish and no offense to be taken. Nothing is a “confrontation”. Just tell it what to do and move on.

[code_biologist]

How difficult it is to resist "someone is wrong on the internet" is a perennial joke. Turns out it doesn't really matter who/what is on the other side if they seem human-like.

[dathinab]

That the AIs where trained on what humans wrote on the internet forms is increasingly sowing as they incresingly mirror all the bad things which are so common on such forums, like:

- non stop, non productive discussions

- gaslighting

- valuing "winning the argument" over correctness

- ignoring of context/ignoring the actual questions/instructions etc.

- bad faith argumentation methods

- etc.

the problem is in a forum you can just decide to ignore "most users", but LLMs tend to copy "most users" more then "a few high quality answers" and you have only one per model type more or less...

[BoorishBears]

The problem the article is about is that suddenly even those of us who refuse to argue with a machine are being dragged into it.

I've had simple prompt engineering tasks that cause 4.8 to clamp down. In the past "browbeating" it (read: a sentence telling it not to read the task in bad faith) was enough.

Now it digs in and starts ranting about why it won't capitulate, I'm actually wrong, etc.

Extremely frustrating, and it became a problem with Opus 4.7 because they're trying to make up for the downgrade in parameter count with more RL, but RL does relatively poorly with non-trivially verified things like nuance in instructions.

[disillusioned]

I'm staying in a hotel right now and the TV is locked in hospitality mode and was blocking me from just installing Plex. It (Opus 4.8) gave me this whole jeremiad about how I need to be careful and it probably won't work and I should just watch on my laptop, but it did give me the service menu code. But man, it was such a downer.

Gemini gave it and clearly explained how best to get in, and then troubleshooted a few other weird issues that cropped up, without the moralizing.

[totetsu]

This could be a good guardrailing technique. Keep people away from your hard limit refusals by ring fencing them with frustrating pedantry.

[leemoore]

If you don't have the capacity to have your mind changed through friction and disagreement with a SOTA LLM and feel compelled to frame those who do to through absurdly reductive statement like "insane arguing with a machine" then that says more about your limitation and lack of understanding than the OP's or Claudes.

[grzracz]

I stopped reading at "This isn’t just my opinion. You can ask Opus 4.6." I guess this is how AI psychosis looks like?

[TacticalCoder]

> A machine cannot "argue" with me, it doesn't want anything nor does it have beliefs or experiences.

Yup I thought that too when reading TFA but then...

It gets really tiring when you see it making glaringly obvious mistakes which you point out because you don't want it to keep making the same mistakes only to be met with an answer that begins with "The point is ...".

I'm not shitting you: Anthropic models shall happily begin a sentence with "The point is ...", when it's not the point and it's just wrong.

Now, to me it's not an issue in that I can change its tone (if anything I can ask another LLM to rewrite me not the code but the english sentences any model spouts out to something nicer) but it is an issue in that you lose time: you just want it to acknowledge its errors so that it stops doing them.

That this thing "argues" (even if we know it doesn't argue) is representative of the fact that it is wrong and refuses to "admit" it (by that I mean: do not consider it important and hence shall keep making the same kind of mistakes).

And that is a problem.

[code_biologist]

Once it's in this loop, Opus 4.8 digs in so aggressively it's structurally incapable of conceding a provided detail as correct, even if it's conceded and agreed with everything backing that detail. Like actually, structurally incapable. I've even baited it into arguing with itself when I've "conceded" its original concern tolling hard, and then the model needs to continue to be the "voice of reason" and it will argue against its original concern because I, the user, said it.