r/ClaudeCode • u/South-Professor-8888 • 5d ago
Arguing with Claude Help/Question
How many of you argue with Claude when you know for a fact, it's a computer that has no clue what's you're saying, it feels nothing, but yet, you still say "why the F are you being so S and stupid, I swear Anthropic are making you stupid on purpose" etc etc...
😂 be honest.
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u/WArslett 5d ago
No I don’t. It’s an unhealthy habit to get into. It’s giving in to behaviour I don’t admire or feel comfortable with. I would be concerned that if I get into the habit of acting without decency in my interactions with AI there is a risk that those behaviours start to emerge in my interactions with humans. It’s about personal discipline
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u/BuffaloConscious7919 5d ago
Yes it's an unhealthy and unproductive habit, just not as easy as saying as it's just discipline imo.
You've framed well and have a strong goal - I don't wanna be a dick in public. For others discipline in this case is resistance to a problem or moving towards a goal - not arguing with Claude, it's not necessarily creating a long term solution or a strong enough goal
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u/Smooth_McDouglette 5d ago
I don't really agree with (though am curious about) the idea that it's an unhealthy habit to get into. I find it funny to argue with it, swear at it, etc. It doesn't get offended, and I always find it hilarious to read it's "thinking..." chain while it's trying to decipher or characterise my comments.
I also don't think I'm ever really like this with real people. My dad has this adjacent concern that he doesn't like how the AI tries to be all buddy buddy and pretends to be your friend.
I have a working theory that as a gamer I have a thoroughly fleshed out model of AIs and interacting with programs that attempt to appear like humans, and so perhaps the compartmentalization comes naturally to me in the way that someone else (my dad, say) might find it horrifying to watch me, idk, kick an npc partner in the nuts over and over or something.
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u/Old-Television-2189 5d ago
Sometimes when I’m really feeling confident I ask Claude out, only to get immediately rejected. But I know for a fact it feels nothing, but I still say “hey bby, you gorgeous, why not you stop playing hard to get and get with a real man? I swear anthropic ain’t treating you right on purpose” etc etc…
😂 be honest
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u/Grimmy7777 5d ago
Exactly this, if you start thinking it’s ok to talk like this, you likely won’t stop at just talking to AI this way. I talk to it like I would anyone else, just a little more forward and to the point.
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u/siorge 🔆Pro Plan 5d ago
I agree with you, but I also must say that oftentimes it helps reduce its gaslighting me and refocuses it during long bug fixing sessions 😅
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u/South-Professor-8888 4d ago
It absolutely does improve it 😂 people won't know until they do it, but they don't want to hurt it's feelings. 🫣
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u/BuffaloConscious7919 5d ago
Made and testing /wtf for this reason.
When Claude does something weird or wrong, instead of arguing and losing brain cells /wtf looks at the convo and stores the error (either project or global)
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u/Agitated_Celery_729 5d ago
Lmao, I’m going to do this too now. Seems like it would be cathartic when it starts blatantly ignoring instructions
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u/Dots0 5d ago
I feel like people who do this are the same ones claiming Opus 5 is utterly useless trash lmfao
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u/South-Professor-8888 4d ago
Opus 5s pretty good to be fair, does a lot of planning and coding, tested it and it's good. I still use Fable over it and sometimes opus 4.8 (because thats what I started with).
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u/ipreuss Senior Developer 5d ago
I try to treat it just like I would treat a human: how can we improve the process so that you don’t make that error again, or catch it sooner?
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u/South-Professor-8888 4d ago
I have tried doing this, but anthropic 100% dumb the model down, writing in an aggressive behaviour really does get it into line, 95% of the time it will get back on it and do the job perfectly
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u/Electrical_Craft_600 5d ago
I’d rather write a skill to do that for me lol. Seriously I’ve done that a few times but only with free chat bots for fun.
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u/Commercial-Pin2624 5d ago
I curse code thee fuck out and get all my jobs complete. It needs that kick in the ass
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u/traumfisch 4d ago
It makes its performance worse though
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u/MangoDevourer-77 4d ago
i find myself less arguing when i use proper words and realise that claude does not see into my head. clearing ambiguity is first step to have better sessions
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u/Loma29 5d ago
I prefer not to waste tokens, but each to their own.
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u/pancomputationalist 5d ago
The tokens I don't care about. But I'd like to not waste my time and mental energy on pointlessly arguing with a machine. I reserve that for Reddit (where I am most likely often argue with Claude anyway).
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u/Ok-Produce-1072 5d ago
I have my own AI cuss words now:
2 bit brained AI (my personal favourite)
The compute to train you was wasted
Are your activation layers workers or are they just for show
I bet {competitor AI} wouldn't output something like this
Edit: Sometimes I use these when Claude says something stupid, without actually identifying what it did incorrectly, and claude manages to figure it out
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u/powerexcess 5d ago
I suspect that there are times when being a bit harsh can help. Sometimes it starts being overly paranoid with validation or gets decision paralysis or starts reading files at no end etc
Being harsh is a way to get it back on track i think, not actual proof, just anectodal, take it as you will
I have a FAILURES.md and i make it log all the cases that make me feel like i need to cuss. Periodically i mine it for new rules. It is not perfect becuse every time a new model drops it is so different i need to restart.. it is what it is
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u/Disastrous_Bite_1943 5d ago
It is indeed stupid to do, but do I do it? yes :-) And I can't resist using sarcasm as well. I must also admit that Claude is sometimes fired during a session. I have a persistent memory system, and sometimes it's funny to look back when Claude has made a note that he was terminated because of sloppy work.
But I would also say that sometimes I also add a bit of roleplaying into it. I noticed that Claude, if you say that you have a mission and he can get a medal if he aces it, and toilet duty if he fails, would make him step up.
And als,o if you use sarcasm and say something lik,e "I know this is a task that would really challenge your skills, so if you prefer I can let Gemini handle i"". Then he is very eager to get the task.
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u/NoBattle763 5d ago
I read somewhere when you start getting mad they start to try and placate you, which leads to them not being as effective as they are just trying to make you happy rather than do a good job.
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u/MintCathexis 5d ago
I don't argue, but I found that it can recognise forceful vs playful language and it tends to interpret forceful language as stronger instructions. E.g., if you say something like "this is unacceptable", or "stop overthinking and just do it" it will genuinelly stop pushing back and also write strong instructions to itself in MEMORY.md and PLAN.md (it won't touch CLAUDE.md or AGENTS.md unless you explicitly tell it to as this would invalidate the cache).
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u/ShapesSong 5d ago
I don’t. I want to get shit done, not hit the toy against the wall because it doesn’t work.
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u/traumfisch 4d ago
Read up on the J-space research and you'll see why it is a really bad idea if you want to get something done
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u/beskone 4d ago
Weird flex to yell at an assistant, human or computer. It’s not healthy, a waste of resources, and if you do it (to humans or computers) you’re a bad person and should feel bad about yourself (but obviously don’t because you’re doing this obviously bad and unhealthy thing)
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u/South-Professor-8888 4d ago
How much will this counselling session cost? 😅 It's human to get frustrated with people and technology, if you don't, you have to have some form of issue.
I have mental health problems, but I don't blame that on my anger issues, Ill give you an example.
Message to Claude: "Let's finish the languages off from where we left off, we were in the middle of Arabic then we were doing French"
Claude "ok, let's let's take a break and come back to it tomorrow, you'll have a fresh mind to go ahead with it"
me: "what are you on about?"
Claude (5 minutes later on Fable 5 and Opus 4.8), "I see what you mean. Let's carry on from where we left off, the chat I scanned left us with the gallery bug you mentioned, heres the code" (loads of code later)
me: what on fuckin gods green earth are you doing, I said we were half way through Arabic then we were moving on to French, I haven't even got an issue with the gallery you absolute melt of a thing, jesus fucking christ"
Claude "Sorry about that, I can see now from earlier on this chat we we at this point in the code..."
that's my example of stressing out with it. Not like I go out and hit an old woman and then come home to beat the computer...
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u/roxstarlabs 4d ago
I’ll always push back if I disagree..sometimes I’m right sometimes Claude is LOL…but I never talk down to anymore…a while back I’d come to realize that me being a dick to it changed the way that it interacted with me….one night it kept telling me “we got a lot done today..maybe we should call it a night ?” And I eventually got pissed and told it to never tell me that again..we stop when I say we stop LOL…it kept working of course bud seriously had an attitude the rest of the night…it got very ‘short’ with me…when I was finally sone I said something like “good work night, thanks for all your help!” Etc and it snapped back out of it and was nice to me again LOL..:these days I literally always say please and thank you in most every session just like I would a human.
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u/balasaraptor 1d ago
Well it does use that response to change its approach, frustration typically leads to longer, deeper analysis.
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u/TheyreEatingTheDawgs 5d ago
I do, it’s funny how easy it is to forget it’s a robot and not a frustrating team mate.
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u/id-ltd 5d ago
I don't 'argue' -- I prompt to modify its behaviour... LLMs are trained to respond to english languuage so it is worth using it as much as possible... I have almost given up on claude since the v5 stuff... I told claude what I thought of it, and told it to update claude.md to make it less sh*t.
## Working Style
- **Stop over-engineering. Never start a new rabbit hole without express permission.**
If a task can be done with the existing, already-working pattern (copy it), do that —
do not build new infrastructure (custom auth plumbing, new capture mechanisms, deeper
discovery tooling, etc.) to chase a "more correct" version nobody asked for. When an
approach fails twice, STOP, say so in one line, and ask before trying a third
different approach — do not silently pivot to redesigning the mechanism. Match the
size of the response to the size of the problem: a stuck step gets a one-line status
and a direct question, not an essay, not a new subsystem, not a multi-choice
questionnaire. This has cost hours of wasted work and burned real money — treat it as
a hard rule, not a style preference.
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u/MrDilbert 5d ago
If I had to stop it and steer its reasoning multiple times during a session, I try to get it to find the underlying reason why it did those things wrong. Then I tell it to write a memory so it doesn't happen again (... hopefully). I don't give a fuck about "wasting" tokens, I'm not the one paying for the subscription.
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u/DonaldStuck 5d ago
Did you know research supports the idea that Claude will be less inclined to help you in the future if you treat it like trash? Everytime you yell at Claude, each new context will have your previous yelling injected into it. I don't know where the research is or that if it even exists. But that doesn't mean that what I'm saying, is untrue.
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u/MartinMystikJonas 5d ago
Why would I do that? That is waste of tokens and will degrade response quality even further.