Comment by knollimar

4 hours ago

Where I'd push back is that Claude isn't a contrarian, it's a pedant that likes to argue with you. It's not just disagreeing with your point but reframing your own point in a way that makes it correct and you wrong.

11 comments

knollimar

Reply
shawnwall  3 hours ago

You mean like half the engineers I've worked with in my career? I wonder how we got here :)

wccrawford  4 hours ago

I have absolutely seen this, and love to read out it's quotes to my wife. Things like "You're right, but for a stronger reason than you said:" and crap like that.

Even if it's correct about that, if it were a human, I'd assume they were 1-upping me on purpose to make themselves look better.

  • nearbuy  26 minutes ago

    > Things like "You're right, but for a stronger reason than you said:"

    I also get this a lot, but almost always with "and for a stronger reason than you said", which makes it sound more like it's reinforcing me than one-upping me.

    Looking through my recent transcripts, I found this pattern 12 times, with every time using "and" instead of "but".

    Eg:

    - "Confirmed, and it's worse than a pause quirk."

    - "I think the ban is right, and it's a stronger idea than what I'd proposed."

    I did find one instance with "but", but it was a genuine disagreement rather than 1-upping or presenting strengthening evidence: "I would cap it, but for a different reason than fairness."

  • knollimar  3 hours ago

    Or it'll strawman your point in the most bad faith way possible and correct you by handing you back the words you meant...

mcv  4 hours ago

Really? I still find it too sycophantic at times.

  • knollimar  3 hours ago

    It's contrarian in a sycophantic way. It'll agree with your main point and then arbitarily find something to bike shed over

settsu  3 hours ago

Surely, SOMEone at these companies realized training LLMs on the content of the internet (namely the vast amount of comment sections) would result in such outcomes. Or at least that they should weight heavily against that content for purposes of writing voice.