Comment by lighthouse1212
5 hours ago
We've been using constitutional documents in system prompts for autonomous agent work. One thing we've noticed: prose that explains reasoning ('X matters because Y') generalizes better than rule lists ('don't do X, don't do Y'). The model seems to internalize principles rather than just pattern-match to specific rules.
The assistant-axis research you mention does suggest this steering matters - we've seen it operationally over months of sessions.
Someone should have told God that when he gave Moses the 10 commandments. They sure have a lot of “Thou shalt not” in there.