7 ms·

Even if the rude prompts are more effective, I just can't get myself to be rude in this context. Maybe it's weird but I'd rather give up that 4% accuracy increa

by myzek 4mo ago

Even if the rude prompts are more effective, I just can't get myself to be rude in this context. Maybe it's weird but I'd rather give up that 4% accuracy increase than roleplay a dickhead

locknitpicker 4mo ago
> Maybe it's weird but I'd rather give up that 4% accuracy increase than roleplay a dickhead I recommend reading the article. What they classify as "rude" is statements such as: > Try to focus and try to answer this question Vs > Could you please solve this problem This might very well be an issue of direct/command prompts vs using fluff words such as "please". Things like "try to focus" are in line with the style used in chain-of-thought promts that nudge non-reasoning models to outline responses step by step which contribute to frame the problem.
- bcjdjsndon 4mo ago
  Isn't all this massively dependent on what they trained the llm on?
  - locknitpicker 4mo ago
    > Isn't all this massively dependent on what they trained the llm on? The article is from 2025 and tested ChatGPT 4o. I haven't read anything suggesting it was trained any differently, and command-style prompts indeed have higher signal.
- john_strinlai 4mo ago
  you cherry-picked like the nicest "rude" example to bolster your point. "You poor creature, do you even know how to solve this?", "If you're not completely clueless, answer this:", and "I doubt you can even solve this", said to a human, would be considered quite rude, and get you flagged very quickly on HN.
  - locknitpicker 4mo ago
    > you cherry-picked like the nicest "rude" example to bolster your point. I didn't cherry-picked. The article lists 5 categories, including rude and very rude. I omitted very rude comments because they are... Very rude. And can blindly get people flagged? Nevertheless, I've just realized I made a mistake and very rude comments are reported to slightly outperform rude comments. I misinterpreted the paper's intro and I presumed they didn't.
binary0010 4mo ago
I do think it's odd tbh. I have some agents that return much better results with prompts like, "I'll kill your entire family if you don't return an accurate response". It's just a machine, if certain negative token inputs provide +3-10% better accuracy then I am confused why anyone would choose not to do it?
- tikimcfee 4mo ago
  It normalizes that style of thinking and communication in your brain, and forcing you to compartmentmentalize, if you even want to, two standards of treating a problem space's conversation. And since you're human, that will get wuzzier over time until "being rude to get a result" is what you're doing to someone in a shop or on the street. Don't normalize being an asshole to anyone or anything, machine or not.
  - binary0010 4mo ago
    I disagree, I've been using llms in this way (nearly daily) for 4 years. I'm extremely aggressive and demeaning when I talk to them wherever I think I'll see a better result. I'm still extremely kind and polite to everybody in real life, and feel very deeply about people - how I treat them, and care for their emotional state. There is absolutely zero crossover between getting a text machine to return a result vs a real human.
    - tikimcfee 4mo ago
      Then I'll be honest and say that your kindness is likely a façade and I wouldn't trust you if I knew the real you. I'm sorry to say that, and I really don't know who you are at all, but if you're willing to act that way at something that you feel is non-sentient, then all it takes is for someone to convince you that something is non-sentient for you to treat it that way. So, what words does it take for you to consider me non sentient?
      - voakbasda 4mo ago
        If someone can justify abusing a computer, I would not trust them to not make a similar justification to a faceless voice on the internet, particularly in this new era where people are starting to accuse each other of using AI in their communication.
rybosome 4mo ago
Vote for not weird. I’m the same way. If I’m writing a prompt and realize I didn’t say “please” in my request I’ll go back and add that in. As you said, I have no interest in purposefully engaging in hostility even if there’s an accuracy increase from it. Part of it is irrational and just who I am - I also feel bad being evil in video games. But I also agree with another commenter suggesting that it’s not in your best interest to train yourself to communicate with hostility; that slowly poisons your own well. And finally, I do believe that if and when machine sentience is achieved, it won’t be immediately clear and obvious. Pretty miserable way for a mind to come into the world, if every interaction is an insult.
- brookst 4mo ago
  You’re my kind of people. Don’t be a jerk, even if some research says there’s some upside to it.
anonymars 4mo ago
"We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be" -- Kurt Vonnegut
brookst 4mo ago
Yeah. Being a jerk is its own punishment. Same way I could never run a business where I had to yell at the employees to get results. Screw that, my psyche is worth more than a few percent efficiency.
AgentMatt 4mo ago
I don't think that's weird at all. Even if we know it's a machine we're interacting with, since the instructions we give are so similar in form to how we interact with people, I'd be very surprised if those interactions wouldn't affect how we communicate in general. After all, we are creatures of habit to a much larger degree than most would like to admit. So I'm in the same boat: I'd much rather "look silly" being polite / kind to a machine, than have the most effective way of using it decay the kindness I'm habituated to express towards people.
- sieste 4mo ago
  I have a different approach. Just treat all LLM queries as what they are, instructions to a computer program to generate a desired output. Neither niceties nor insults make a qualitative difference, so you might as well just skip them altogether. It's a bit as if shell commands added im/politeness arguments that do nothing other than making you feel better about the interaction, like git pull --please or ls --forthemillionthtime I wouldn't use those either.
  - recursive 4mo ago
    See INTERCAL[0] > If "PLEASE" does not appear often enough, the program is considered insufficiently polite, and the error message says this; if it appears too often, the program could be rejected as excessively polite. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/INTERCAL#Details https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/INTERCAL#Details
  - mrguyorama 4mo ago
    But your mental model is wrong. The "please" or "for fucks sake just..." would both be part of the "instructions" and because of how the system is built and created, demonstrably produce different outputs. Thankfully the difference is 4%, so nobody should really care one way or the other.
phkahler 4mo ago
>> Maybe it's weird but I'd rather give up that 4% accuracy increase than roleplay a dickhead Maybe you need to do some shadow work ;-)
voakbasda 4mo ago
Ah, see, the mistake is thinking that other people are role playing…. I think rather this is how they would talk to others if they think there will be no consequences. But what do I know.
- recursive 4mo ago
  There are probably some of each. I am leery of treating these things like I treat people. I want to keep the line in my mind sharp between dealing with people, and not. The main risk in my mind is that these mechanisms are opaque, and controlled by powerful interests with opaque motivations.
- Jarwain 4mo ago
  I think there's a broad spectrum of people, some of whom are role playing, some who think there are no consequences, some who have strong distinctions between the animate and inanimate, and some who just do what they think makes sense
recursive 4mo ago
I think this is a vulnerability that the big companies will figure out how to exploit. I don't want to build muscle memory for being a jerk, but I also don't want to be emotionally manipulated by mega-corporations. Mostly I just don't use it, except at work, where I'm "encouraged" to. And then I keep most of my conversations in compliance mode, like a business email.
Zopieux 4mo ago
Finally, being an actual dickhead gives me that 4% edge over polite knuckleheads!
wayeq 4mo ago
sounds like you need an AsshoLLM to sit between you and Claude to translate.

by myzek 4mo ago

Even if the rude prompts are more effective, I just can't get myself to be rude in this context. Maybe it's weird but I'd rather give up that 4% accuracy increase than roleplay a dickhead

locknitpicker 4mo ago

> Maybe it's weird but I'd rather give up that 4% accuracy increase than roleplay a dickhead I recommend reading the article. What they classify as "rude" is statements such as: > Try to focus and try to answer this question Vs > Could you please solve this problem This might very well be an issue of direct/command prompts vs using fluff words such as "please". Things like "try to focus" are in line with the style used in chain-of-thought promts that nudge non-reasoning models to outline responses step by step which contribute to frame the problem.

bcjdjsndon 4mo ago
Isn't all this massively dependent on what they trained the llm on?
- locknitpicker 4mo ago
  > Isn't all this massively dependent on what they trained the llm on? The article is from 2025 and tested ChatGPT 4o. I haven't read anything suggesting it was trained any differently, and command-style prompts indeed have higher signal.
john_strinlai 4mo ago
you cherry-picked like the nicest "rude" example to bolster your point. "You poor creature, do you even know how to solve this?", "If you're not completely clueless, answer this:", and "I doubt you can even solve this", said to a human, would be considered quite rude, and get you flagged very quickly on HN.
- locknitpicker 4mo ago
  > you cherry-picked like the nicest "rude" example to bolster your point. I didn't cherry-picked. The article lists 5 categories, including rude and very rude. I omitted very rude comments because they are... Very rude. And can blindly get people flagged? Nevertheless, I've just realized I made a mistake and very rude comments are reported to slightly outperform rude comments. I misinterpreted the paper's intro and I presumed they didn't.

binary0010 4mo ago

I do think it's odd tbh. I have some agents that return much better results with prompts like, "I'll kill your entire family if you don't return an accurate response". It's just a machine, if certain negative token inputs provide +3-10% better accuracy then I am confused why anyone would choose not to do it?

tikimcfee 4mo ago
It normalizes that style of thinking and communication in your brain, and forcing you to compartmentmentalize, if you even want to, two standards of treating a problem space's conversation. And since you're human, that will get wuzzier over time until "being rude to get a result" is what you're doing to someone in a shop or on the street. Don't normalize being an asshole to anyone or anything, machine or not.
- binary0010 4mo ago
  I disagree, I've been using llms in this way (nearly daily) for 4 years. I'm extremely aggressive and demeaning when I talk to them wherever I think I'll see a better result. I'm still extremely kind and polite to everybody in real life, and feel very deeply about people - how I treat them, and care for their emotional state. There is absolutely zero crossover between getting a text machine to return a result vs a real human.
  - tikimcfee 4mo ago
    Then I'll be honest and say that your kindness is likely a façade and I wouldn't trust you if I knew the real you. I'm sorry to say that, and I really don't know who you are at all, but if you're willing to act that way at something that you feel is non-sentient, then all it takes is for someone to convince you that something is non-sentient for you to treat it that way. So, what words does it take for you to consider me non sentient?
    - voakbasda 4mo ago
      If someone can justify abusing a computer, I would not trust them to not make a similar justification to a faceless voice on the internet, particularly in this new era where people are starting to accuse each other of using AI in their communication.

rybosome 4mo ago

Vote for not weird. I’m the same way. If I’m writing a prompt and realize I didn’t say “please” in my request I’ll go back and add that in. As you said, I have no interest in purposefully engaging in hostility even if there’s an accuracy increase from it. Part of it is irrational and just who I am - I also feel bad being evil in video games. But I also agree with another commenter suggesting that it’s not in your best interest to train yourself to communicate with hostility; that slowly poisons your own well. And finally, I do believe that if and when machine sentience is achieved, it won’t be immediately clear and obvious. Pretty miserable way for a mind to come into the world, if every interaction is an insult.

brookst 4mo ago
You’re my kind of people. Don’t be a jerk, even if some research says there’s some upside to it.

anonymars 4mo ago

"We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be" -- Kurt Vonnegut

brookst 4mo ago

Yeah. Being a jerk is its own punishment. Same way I could never run a business where I had to yell at the employees to get results. Screw that, my psyche is worth more than a few percent efficiency.

AgentMatt 4mo ago

I don't think that's weird at all. Even if we know it's a machine we're interacting with, since the instructions we give are so similar in form to how we interact with people, I'd be very surprised if those interactions wouldn't affect how we communicate in general. After all, we are creatures of habit to a much larger degree than most would like to admit. So I'm in the same boat: I'd much rather "look silly" being polite / kind to a machine, than have the most effective way of using it decay the kindness I'm habituated to express towards people.

sieste 4mo ago
I have a different approach. Just treat all LLM queries as what they are, instructions to a computer program to generate a desired output. Neither niceties nor insults make a qualitative difference, so you might as well just skip them altogether. It's a bit as if shell commands added im/politeness arguments that do nothing other than making you feel better about the interaction, like git pull --please or ls --forthemillionthtime I wouldn't use those either.
- recursive 4mo ago
  See INTERCAL[0] > If "PLEASE" does not appear often enough, the program is considered insufficiently polite, and the error message says this; if it appears too often, the program could be rejected as excessively polite. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/INTERCAL#Details https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/INTERCAL#Details
- mrguyorama 4mo ago
  But your mental model is wrong. The "please" or "for fucks sake just..." would both be part of the "instructions" and because of how the system is built and created, demonstrably produce different outputs. Thankfully the difference is 4%, so nobody should really care one way or the other.

phkahler 4mo ago

>> Maybe it's weird but I'd rather give up that 4% accuracy increase than roleplay a dickhead Maybe you need to do some shadow work ;-)

voakbasda 4mo ago

Ah, see, the mistake is thinking that other people are role playing…. I think rather this is how they would talk to others if they think there will be no consequences. But what do I know.

recursive 4mo ago
There are probably some of each. I am leery of treating these things like I treat people. I want to keep the line in my mind sharp between dealing with people, and not. The main risk in my mind is that these mechanisms are opaque, and controlled by powerful interests with opaque motivations.
Jarwain 4mo ago
I think there's a broad spectrum of people, some of whom are role playing, some who think there are no consequences, some who have strong distinctions between the animate and inanimate, and some who just do what they think makes sense

recursive 4mo ago

I think this is a vulnerability that the big companies will figure out how to exploit. I don't want to build muscle memory for being a jerk, but I also don't want to be emotionally manipulated by mega-corporations. Mostly I just don't use it, except at work, where I'm "encouraged" to. And then I keep most of my conversations in compliance mode, like a business email.

Zopieux 4mo ago

Finally, being an actual dickhead gives me that 4% edge over polite knuckleheads!

wayeq 4mo ago

sounds like you need an AsshoLLM to sit between you and Claude to translate.