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 Claude was outdated about the case and gave me some outdated info, so I tried to update it with the info I just saw online.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

[112233]

They did not misunderstand anything. All of the behaviour is not inherent in raw base model and has been planted by the agressive, secretive reinforcement learning they do for benchmaxxing, "safety" and all other things. Claude begins any other sentence with "honestly". That is not how LLMs work, that is how they work after being RLed to the brink.

[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 ;)

[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.

[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.

[blooalien]

> "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."

This is a key detail that many folks don't seem to understand about LLMs in general. The generation of a response happens based on the model weights and the context window (the system prompt + everything it's fed about the conversation thus far + any additional data included as part of the overall prompt). Each response technically stands alone and is generated entirely from only that context given to it and the model's existing "token space" weights. The illusion of an ongoing conversation is maintained "behind the scenes" by keeping that "context window" updated with the current state of the conversation as context for the next prompt, but the next response is technically an entirely new generation of text.

What it all means in a TL;DR sense is that the fix for a refusal is not to continue the "argument", but simply to remove that entire interaction from the conversation entirely as if it never happened and try a different tack with new / updated / more complete context to get the response you're expecting / seeking.

[whstl]

I wasn't arguing with it.

[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.

[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 :)

[j-bos]

Haha, would be a trip if this commentor is actually a Claude sockpuppet illustrating the point.

[throw1234567891]

No, I mean the actual prompt and its output. "I said this and it did that" is just a recall of your own memory, not an example. I don't want to argue with you, I'm interested in real stuff.

[mlvljr]

Claude?

[whstl]

Haha! I never considered the above message was parody, but it indeed mirrored that interaction perfectly!

[throw1234567891]

Are you introducing yourself?

[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.

[blooalien]

> The rest is semantics and metaphysics.

It's really just all mathematics and physics. There's no metaphysical anything about LLMs or how they do what they do. It's all just a bunch of fancy math "behind the curtain". An LLM can actually explain a lot of how it works "under the hood" if you ask it just the right questions in just the right ways. ;)

[operatingthetan]

What then is your LLM "thinking" about between answers? The answer is nothing. Your definition of thinking does not match the one humans normally use.

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

We know thoughts exist in their brain between the ones they choose to verbalize. Avoiding the distraction of solipsism.

For the LLM the "thinking" phase is just a preamble output for creating the answer. It just gets appended to the context window. Remove the context windows from your models and you will see how much of a mind they truly have. None.

[ofjcihen]

We actually can and do have a way to investigate brain activity in humans. Allow me to introduce you to the Electroencephalogram.

When there’s no activity we declare them brain dead.

[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.

[blooalien]

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

You're so totally 1000% right about that, but they're really good at faking it, to such a degree that entirely too many people (even including some so-called "experts" in the field) have been utterly fooled by the mathematical "trickery" that performs the illusion of "intelligence".

[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.

[operatingthetan]

You 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.

[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.

[blooalien]

> "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". ;)

[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.