Comment by vidarh

12 hours ago

Claude, at least 4.5, not checked recently, has/had an obsession with the number 47 (or numbers containing 47). Ask it to pick a random time or number, or write prose containing numbers, and the bias was crazy.

Also "something shifted" or "cracked".

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vidarh

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dhosek  12 hours ago

Humans tend to be biased towards 47 as well. It’s almost halfway between 1 and 100 and prime so you’ll find people picking it when they have to choose a random number.

Then there’s the whole Pomona College thing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/47_(number)

  • vidarh  11 hours ago

    The whole blue 7 thing [1] and variations is very fascinating, but we don't tend to repeatedly pick the same number in the same exact context, though. That's what made this stand out to me - I had a document where Claude had picked 47 for "random" things dozens of times.

    [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue%E2%80%93seven_phenomenon

    I experienced this even second hand when a coworker excitedly told of an encounter with a cold reader, and I knew the answer would be blue 7 before he told me what his guess was. Just his recap of the conversation was enough.