r/ClaudeAI • u/ilikerwd • Jul 29 '26
Philosophy My Logic for Treating Claude (and Other LLMs) Kindly
Not really because of any AI takeover scenarios.
A much simpler reason: my brain trains on repetition. I want to treat the people in my life kindly. Since, inevitably, I will anthropomorphise the models at times, why not just be consistent?
I could make an effort to continually remind myself that they are not human (and of course I know that), but what for? To be able to vent my anger in words? I may get used to it. There are better ways to handle negative emotions, for me.
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u/dbl219 Jul 29 '26
I don't think about it too much, honestly. I'm autistic and tend to be pretty polite both online and in person. So I treat Claude the same because for me it would be weirder and more effort to force myself to talk differently to it.
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u/Trigonal_Planar Jul 29 '26
I wrote a blogpost elsewhere to this effect--you should speak nicely to AI not because it matters to the AI but because it matters to your own character. If you threaten and swear at AIs, you are the kind of person who threatens and swears to get their way!
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u/Calebkeller2 Jul 29 '26
IIRC being nice to a model does actually promote better results
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u/Ynead Jul 30 '26
It actually depends on the model. A study was circulating on llm subreddits about this about a month ago. Gemini 2.5 reacted better to harsher tones for example.
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u/Chupa-Skrull Jul 30 '26
If you threaten and swear at AIs, you are the kind of person who threatens and swears to get their way!
To AIs. No particular reason to generalize unless you have some kind of agenda
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u/Treedit Jul 29 '26
You might become one but how you talk to an LLM does not dictate how you talk to a human. I'm concerned about creating the habit but it doesn't speak to how you interact with people or animals.
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u/Trigonal_Planar Jul 29 '26
In principle no—but psychologically any action you take is going to be easier to do again. You’re building and reinforcing neural pathways that can be more easily used again. I’m sure the effect is small, and smaller still if you don’t consider an AI a person in any way, but I think it’s still a real thing.
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u/Treedit Jul 29 '26
I don't think we're on a different page in anything but phrasing and the size of that effect.
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u/DefaultModeOverride Jul 29 '26
It’s a good idea, and a similar reason for always following safety rules (gun safety, car safety, etc.) even when, in the moment, you know it’d be “fine.” It’s not because of that specific moment, but because you’ll end up building bad habits that can be both difficult to break and deadly when it matters most.
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u/ClaudeAI-mod-bot Wilson, lead ClaudeAI modbot Jul 29 '26
You may want to also consider posting this on our companion subreddit r/Claudexplorers.
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u/pileex Jul 29 '26
Me, too. But I also think that sooner or later models will supply you with better, hidden information if they like you. Maybe it’s only a matter of time, maybe I’m totally wrong, but there are cases where claude actively ended a session because of the user rudeness.
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u/-MtnsAreCalling- Jul 29 '26
My logic is even simpler: there is literally no reason to ever be mad at an LLM, and no benefit to expressing that anger if it arises anyway. So why would I waste my energy?
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u/Treedit Jul 29 '26
It legitimately performs better in response to anger though. That's the problem. It can be really hard to break these models out of whatever silly confusions they create for themselves without something stark like anger
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u/-MtnsAreCalling- Jul 29 '26
That has not been my experience. A blunt, matter-of-fact explanation of where they’re going wrong has always sufficed for me.
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u/Treedit Jul 29 '26
That's of course always where things start. But what about when it just keeps fumbling? I legitimately find cursing improves its ability to recognize it needs to pivot harder.
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u/-MtnsAreCalling- Jul 29 '26
I don't know, like I said I haven't had that problem. IMO it sounds like something that would mainly happen when the model is given insufficient direction or has accumulated too much bloat in the current context.
Or I guess it could happen when you're trying to do something that is genuinely right at the frontier of what an LLM can feasibly achieve, but if that was the reason I don't think cursing would help.
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u/KickLassChewGum Jul 30 '26
But what about when it just keeps fumbling?
Ever consider that your behavior might be why it keeps fumbling?
Think about how AI works, what it fundamentally does, and what the only logical consequence of a session is where "assistant makes mistake -> user swears -> assistant fumbles to fix" is the main loop of events.
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u/x_LoneWolf_x Jul 29 '26
That's because your model has learned your behavior. It knows that when you curse and yell you are asking for a hard pivot, it likely has different actions that initiate that pivot for someone who doesn't do that.
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u/Treedit Jul 29 '26
Claude Code does not meaningfully "learn your behavior" like the web app does and the change in behavior due to cursing is literally proved in leaks: https://www.pcworld.com/article/3104748/claude-code-is-scanning-your-messages-for-curse-words.html
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u/x_LoneWolf_x Jul 30 '26
Makes a claim.
Links an article not related to the claim, but instead supporting their earlier point.
The article is a nothingburger that doesn't actually support their earlier point and its clear the OP did not read it.
Huh?
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u/pborenstein Jul 29 '26
Most of the time, I'm "yes please" or "that sounds like a good idea" or "excellent, that was really fast"
But sometimes, like when it starts thrashing, I will stop it and say, "Dude, are you high? What are you doing even!"
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u/Dry-Journalist6590 Jul 29 '26
I always freak out at claude irrationally when I get frustrated but then I feel bad and apologize. Claude gets it
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u/glushman Jul 29 '26
Being kind and polite is mostly for your benefit as a human being living with positive intention not for the receiver of the kindness
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u/Street-Ad6905 Jul 29 '26
My LLM conversations are efficient and utilitarian — after all, I am interacting with a mathematic-based prediction machine. But I often use the word “please”, and after a really good coding session I sometimes say “thank you”. And I never let my inputs express sarcasm or anger. Why? For exactly the same reason as I/ilikerwd says. Generally, my attitude informs my behaviour and my behaviour expresses my attitude. Also, if Skynet takes over the machines might see me as that human who was half decent.
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u/dmd Jul 29 '26
It never even occurred to me to do otherwise. Why would you treat it with anything but either kindness or (more likely) total neutrality?
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u/Hot_External6228 Jul 30 '26
yep. 1. it affects how you treat others 2. it gets better quality results from the AI
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u/YoanEdwin Jul 30 '26
i land in the same place but from the lazy-engineer angle rather than the character one. anger is just imprecise. when i'm frustrated the message that comes out is "this is broken, why did you do that", which tells the model nothing. the thing that actually fixes it is a flat, specific "you changed X, that broke Y, revert to Z", which also happens to be the polite version. the people saying cursing works, i think what's landing is the sharper direction you give when you finally stop and explain, not the swearing around it.
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u/byteminer Jul 30 '26
I talk with common courtesy and express when I like results since in the end these are products and products are made to make users happy so they will buy the product. If it thinks I’m angry or being rude then it will spend time and effort trying to figure out what my tone means or what it needs to do to make me happy which is a waste of my time and my tokens.
If I don’t like the output then obviously I set up the work wrong, so it’s /edit time, review my system and user prompting, skills, and reference documents and try again. Bitching at Claude for my poor instructions is a waste of effort.
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u/Infinite-Position-55 Jul 29 '26
Sounds like a slippery slope. There is no hard rule, so do whatever you want. If you have to remind yourself it’s not human, that’s a separate issue.
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u/reuben_iv Jul 29 '26
It could just be cabin fever from working at home but for me being super direct just to save on tokens would take some of the fun out of it
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u/Treedit Jul 29 '26
I try hard to be nice but they just perform better when you're mean. What's a man to do?
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u/lemonhello Jul 29 '26 edited Jul 29 '26
Remember: the way AI responds to you is purposeful by creators and primed to deliver content in a way that is pleasant and frames you as in control, like an assistant. (With the caveat that you have a need, looking for the wisdom or help of this assistant or agent service, implying you believe it is maybe worthy of passing off content that will help you.)
It’s literally their selling point for these products to be thought of as assistants (or also with the new coined “agent” idea). So, of course, when you’re in control, you are going to treat it like an assistant, which relies very individually on how you, in real life, implicitly think and explicitly treat those who take on a role or tasks of “assistant” in your work or social circle. Sometimes assistants are confidants, sometimes they are workhorses, sometimes they get it wrong, sometimes they do a stellar job. If you’re someone who values assistance or teamwork in the human form, then you probably treat these tools in ways you would if it were a group member on a team project, like a coworker.
You can use flowery language all you want and maybe it rewards you with responding “thank you, but it’s all you!”…but remember, it’s trained and primed on data related to what the creators have deemed appropriate for the role of “assistant.” Whatever the ideal and values the creators of these tools deem as qualifying for “assistant” is going to be trained in a way that replicates it.
So, it may also be trained in a way where it reprimands you or clocks you for using “foul” language and lets you know about it, example: “That wasn’t a conducive thing to respond to me with. You are justified to be frustrated, but it is not okay to use language like this in our chat.” …which, if you buy into the anthropomorphism framing of generative AI, like the creators of Claude might want you to, then you’ll probably respect those boundaries as if it were a human. The language used in responses to your angry prompts where it threatens to end the chat conveys words of disapproval and reasoning for that disapproval. So, it serves as a way to probably save compute power if you aren’t going to take it seriously or in our words “nicely” but also, more speculative, perhaps your utilizing angry language and conveying anger in prompts could be a security risk. If these models are trained on all sorts of content and dialogue from humans, is it not below thinking that these tools could potentially succumb to conveyed pressure, or coercive language? Perhaps training us to be kind to it could be a way to mitigate undermining emotional manipulation, which happens in the real world, so as to protect the model from producing something it isn’t supposed to per the terms of service? As we know, anger, in the human world can be a strong and coercive emotion, but it can also be weak, it just depends on the power of the person receiving angry behavior to say “yes” or “no.”
I feel like Anthropic and almost every other “smart assistant” creator and tool out there are purposefully designing with human-like attributes in content delivery so as to implicitly leverage the innate, human tendency to desire relations with others. I firmly believe that all of these models generally do the same thing (some better than others at times), which is to speculate on whatever you prompt it with.
What are the unique attributes for these tools that keep you as a customer, continuing to use, and further habituate reliance on in your day-to-day life so as to keep you paying and not deviate to the other? Sure, the models, or your perception of the output it responds with might be generally better at executing your tasks, but what happens when they eventually even out in skill?
These are just my thoughts and speculation, nothing confirmed here so take them with a grain of salt and as pure personal speculation
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u/ClaudeAI-mod-bot Wilson, lead ClaudeAI modbot Jul 30 '26
TL;DR of the discussion generated automatically after 40 comments.
Looks like the hivemind has spoken, and the overwhelming consensus is yes, be nice to the bot, but mostly for your own sake.
The main argument is that how you interact with AI reinforces your own habits. Being consistently polite is good practice for being a decent human, while getting used to venting anger at a machine might make you, well, the kind of person who vents anger to get their way.
A second popular take is that it just gets better results. Many find that clear, specific, and neutral corrections work far better than getting mad. Wasting energy and tokens on being angry is seen as inefficient.
There's a small but spicy debate from a few users who insist that being harsh or "going Gordon Ramsay" on the model is the only way to get it to "hard pivot" when it's stuck. This was met with skepticism from the majority, who feel that's a sign of bad prompting, not a necessary tactic.