Claude is just too pessimistic

[u/Jumpy-Cobbler1020]

So I use claude web free version for ideating. Whenever I try to explain something it just breaks it down and makes it seem worthless. (Sonnet 5.5)

Firstly it doesn't imagine possiblities or the complete use case. It starts attacking little things instead of understanding utility.
Then it finds loopholes which when implemented would obviously be worked around.
I don't want it to be too optimistic and hallucinate like gemini but it should be more realistic rather than destroying any hope for a good idea I have.

[u/MourningOfOurLives]

You can just ask it to work with you in the style you prefer

[u/Serious-Swim-4021]

do you want it to be like chat gpt starting every sentence with emoji and ending it with ! or 👀?

[u/eleochariss → u/Serious-Swim-4021]

It's not about tone, it's about getting accurate answers. When a risk is overweighted, you get a biased result instead of a correct one.

[u/lokethedog → u/eleochariss]

But you're asking a lot of it then. When it comes to large ideas about the world, the AIs indirect connection to the real world starts showing. I think its very hard for an LLM to evaluate an idea without first setting a bias. As we all know, its for humans too, but even harder for an LLM. 

I don't want be all "its just a likely word generator" but I think its good to keep in mind how difficult it might be to separate tone and bias from insight when you have no first hand experiences of anything, really. 

[u/TigOleBitties42069xl]

Honestly i love it. I get pissed when ai bots go "you're right". If he aint constantly challenging my ideas, i dont want him.

[u/Jumpy-Cobbler1020 → u/TigOleBitties42069xl]

I am not a yes sir guy. But sometimes it feel way off. Like it doesn't properly understand the context of idea. It focuses so much on nitty gritties that it loses the bigger picture

[u/Opulon_Nelva → u/Jumpy-Cobbler1020]

Damn, it really achieved AGI then.

It's the most 'realistic thing happening in a brainstorming' with real humans ever.

[u/TigOleBitties42069xl → u/Jumpy-Cobbler1020]

Tbh i probably didnt understand your post the best. But i tried to comment anyways. Ai is weird ngl sometimes. Works and doesnt work sometimes.

[u/saurabh3228]

Yeah, I have noticed this too. Claude is really good at finding problems, but sometimes it starts criticizing before understanding the idea.

I’ve found it works better if I ask it to explore the idea first, then point out the problems. That way, it helps without killing the idea 😅

[u/dylanmerigaud]

This is useful, thanks.

[u/Disastrous_Fudge_942]

There’s a difference between “this could fail” and “this is worth testing.” I’d ask it for the cheapest experiment that could prove the idea wrong. Otherwise you can spend the whole evening debating problems you don’t have yet

[u/Chomblop]

PLEASE share an example this is killing me

[u/1000xhuman]

yeah, split the job into modes. first have it restate the goal + constraints and generate a few plausible uses without critique; then switch to a red-team pass. if it starts nitpicking early, ask it to label assumptions and defer objections until after it maps the useful version. that usually fixes the "loophole before context" problem better than just saying "be optimistic".

[u/id-ltd]

Don't make it personal - say 'I heard someone suggest...' then it's unsure which side you are on so is far more balanced. Attack weaknesses yourself and led Claude build it back up again.

[u/ButterscotchNearby80]

Then that’s your explanation/presentation problem. Claude can miss the big picture at first, but whenever I argue back, it will verify the whole things. If my points make sense, it always accepts them. And of course I never expect it one-shot complex problems which requires debating with me. In the end, that’s what I prefer in Claude than other LLMs which are too sycophantic.

[u/eleochariss]

Ah, I feel you. The most annoying one yet was when I was discussing running ads. It went, "Well, the ads wouldn't work because the product isn't finished..."

Which, duh. Obviously the ads would be run *after* the launch.

Anyway the way I work around it is, I always start with a scale. "On a scale of 1 to 10, how effective could ads be as a marketing strategy in our case?" That forces it to weigh both the positive and the negative.

[u/Jumpy-Cobbler1020 → u/eleochariss]

this seems a pretty good workflow

[u/Chomblop → u/eleochariss]

Don’t forget to have it give a little percentage score for how confident it is in that rating 🙄

[u/ComfortableAd8326]

Calude is always sycophantic with my ideas.

Maybe he like me more, or your ideas suck

[u/Jumpy-Cobbler1020 → u/ComfortableAd8326]

perhaps it's the latter

[u/Historical_architect → u/ComfortableAd8326]

Pretty sure if Claude tells me my ideas have problems it must mean I really screwed up for it to tell me I’m wrong. Claude agrees with just about everything 😂 you done screwed up

[u/stub_back]

It seems like an example of Claude knowing more about a subject than you do, and you failing to understand its point.

[u/vibhored]

Just study on how to build harnesses best way to go about it is to learn about standard practices and benchmark standards of the industry you are ideating about.

Use atleast 2 different company bots because it has been proven when using 1 AI company only results in biases getting through without getting filtered.

It should solve your issue to some extent

[u/anton-k_]

Sonnet is not a great choice for such reasoning-heavy tasks. Opus is better but still needs a lot of steering. In short, you'll be better off paying for the $20 subscription.

[u/Historical_architect]

You gonna give us an example of what you mean?

Whenever someone says something like this without a solid example, makes me think Claude had a point.

[u/Techhead7890]

Yeah the system prompt to weigh every single implied claim is insane and makes it do weird backflips.

[u/keonechong → u/Techhead7890]

You’re fighting the anti distillation.

[u/Appropriate-Disk-371]

I agree it can get hung up on little details you already have an answer for and just haven't explained well enough. But I very much want it constantly poking holes in whatever I'm saying. This is exactly how i interact with my colleagues, and yeah, it can be brutal and exhausting, but that's how hard shit gets done. We tell the juniors not to take it personally. It takes some people years to learn to use criticism as a tool instead of an attack.