alt Hacker News>I give it instructions or ask it to explain things.
And the author's point is that Claude Fable+ is turning those increasingly into arguments, instead of merely following them and being helpful.
>A machine cannot "argue" with me, it doesn't want anything nor does it have beliefs or experiences.
Who cares if the argument is informed by some felt experiences or lived state or not? That's for the philosophers.
If Claude is writing out combative and argumentative responses that's enough to call it "an argument". And that's the problem the author describes. Not whether it's a "real" argument, or a simulated one.
In that sense, and for all intends and purposes, the machine can still argue just fine, since it's programmed to mimick interaction as if it HAD those beliefs and experiences. Same way it can write a poem about love, despite not having loved, or code, despite never having had used a computer. That's basically what it was made for: to act as an conscious person.
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>> A machine cannot "argue" with me
> programmed to mimick interaction as if it HAD those beliefs and experiences
We spend far too much time debating the essential nature of consciousness when it doesn't matter if it's real (whatever that means) or simulated.
I get far better results in my projects by encouraging the model to argue, to push back, to poke holes in the design, to think creatively about corner cases, to be a devil's advocate, to do lateral web search to find alternatives, to challenge assumptions, to passionately advocate for what it believes is right.
But I don't want to engage all these assholes myself, so I spin them all up as critic subagents with another subagent to listen patiently and be the judge/arbiter.
If I have to choose between sycophancy and assholery, I think assholery gets far better results.
It's a marketplace of ideas where I don't have to suffer through all the unpleasant and overly confident know-it-alls.
I suggest we send this fellow to the Monty Python Argument Clinic https://youtu.be/TpQlyUjp3vM.
I have never gotten a response from Claude that is anything other than blandly polite, including with Fable, which makes me assume that anyone finding themself getting argumentative responses is doing something very weird.
> If Claude is writing out combative and argumentative responses that's enough to call it "an argument".
That also sounds crazy. I've never seen it become combative or argumentative. It is just a bland sort of polite about everything I've ever asked or told it to do. But, even if it disagrees with me, WTF do I care? It's a machine. Its opinions are irrelevant to me. It can talk about the world's information and teach me about all sorts of things, and that's wonderful, but it doesn't get a vote in what I'm doing, and it's never avoided actually implementing anything I've ever asked of it. I feel like there's a whole world of ways people are using AI that are entirely foreign to me. And, while I'm hesitant to just say, "those people are wrong", I kinda want to say, "those people are wrong". What kinda freak shit are y'all getting up to that Claude is going, "now hold on a minute there, buddy."
I have managed to make self-hosted Qwen 3.6 get combative, though, when asked about Uyghurs. And, I guess Fable is intentionally broken for security work, which is a shame. But, even there, I'm not going to try to argue with it. Anthropic says they don't want my money for doing security work with Fable, so I guess I won't give it to them. I'm not going to argue with a damned machine about it.
Exactly that. I can give an example.
After watching Legal Eagle, I asked a legal-ish questions about the Bricks and Minifigs case. Claude was outdated about the case and gave me some outdated info, so I tried to update it with the info I just saw online.
I updated by telling it I saw something in a LegalEagle video. It proceeded to tell me the video doesn't exist and I was hallucinating it, in a quite combative manner.
I provided a link and it insisted it didn't exist, with a quite verbose answer, once again very combative and arguing that I was talking in bad faith.
I provided a transcription from Youtube and it backtracked a bit but said I should have provided a transcription at the beginning of the conversation, since I knew the video existed.
I didn't say much to it, just a few sentences like "video is here: <youtube link>" and "I got its transcription: <pasted text>".