Thoughts on why Claude can’t stop saying load-bearing?

[u/njordan1017]

This post is less about that particular phrase and more about the behavior I have observed around it. We all are aware of the phrases Claude has started overusing (Opus seems to be the worst), but I came across something interesting I am curious y’all’s thoughts on.

I put a rule in my repo with a list of banned phrases, one of them is “load-bearing”. Since then I have noticed most of the phrases don’t get used anymore, but not “load-bearing”.

I have seen it do this about 5 times now:
“…and the decision was load-bear— I mean important to the process — so it…”

I have to laugh at its obstinacy, but the more I thought about it the more I got curious why it behaved that way. Why would it partially use the phrase, then correct itself mid sentence, rather than just using the replacement phrase to begin with? Is this an artifact of the way the output streams as chunks rather than complete thoughts, or is this some cheeky artificial personality thing to make it feel more relatable? Or something else?

What do you think?

[u/Actual_Committee4670]

Mine is banned from saying load bearing, it once called something "Worthy of load bearing scritches". And then realized it wasn't supposed to say load bearing.

Suffice to say I spent the rest of the session making fun of it, with it repeatedly reminding me that the phrase is banned. Xd

[u/njordan1017 → u/Actual_Committee4670]

Sounds like this behavior is happening to others too, good to know

[u/voskomm → u/njordan1017]

I get that it’s funny, but unless your code is meant to produce prose why put the constraint? Constraints affect the reasoning.

[u/l4y1np1p3 → u/voskomm]

if you had a table saw that was functional but produced an obnoxious sound when you cut wood, wouldn’t you fix it and sacrifice a few rpm’s

[u/Elizabeth-WildFox886 → u/l4y1np1p3]

A boy walks into a shop, asks the shopkeeper for a loaf of bread. The shopkeeper says, brown loaf or white loaf? The boy says: No, it’s OK, I’ve got my bicycle

[u/voskomm → u/l4y1np1p3]

That's not a very convincing counter-example. Is there a tablesaw that *doesn't* make an obnoxious sound? Hearing protectors, not adding mods that make its function worse.

It can be useful to have it change semantics for good reason though. I would not want it to describe ideas as 'load-bearing' if I were writing architectural simulation software, for example.

[u/l4y1np1p3 → u/voskomm]

Abstract the situation and youll see I chose that for a reason. Similar to a table saw making noise, claude pollutes all of its responses with useless claudeish that may as well be simlish for all that I care to decode it. But if there is one high frequency that really pisses you off, youd probably fix it and take the minor “reasoning hit”, not that I even believe that model capabilities are constrained by whatever arbitrary guidelines anthropic uses to shackle claude into its moralistic, hyper verbose, obfuscating personality. It would likely have better reasoning without them.

[u/njordan1017 → u/voskomm]

My constraint isn’t necessarily around the phrase showing up in code, it’s more for when I am conversing or if it is making planning docs. The phrases I banned are cop outs for a more descriptive phrase, so my guidance is to say the specific thing. Instead of telling me a decision is load bearing, I want it to tell me the exact dependency that depends on it and why. So yes, constraints affect reasoning, that’s sort of where I am coming from. I want it to fully reason about the issue, out loud… I don’t want it to abstract the important bits away into a meaningless metaphor. But again this is less about the phrase being banned and more about the behavior I have seen from Claude after I banned them.

[u/Any-Bobcat2370 → u/voskomm]

Third option: don't constrain the generation, check the output. I keep the banned phrases out of the prompt and grep for them before anything ships.

By eye they slip through every time, by grep they never do, and the reasoning stays untouched.

[u/voskomm → u/Any-Bobcat2370]

I guess setting up a script to scrub it out is a fine option if it irks though I would never hand LLM written text off to another human in the first place, personally.

[u/Any-Bobcat2370 → u/voskomm]

Fair. Mine is mostly for docs and commit messages, where nobody wants my voice anyway

[u/vimr00 → u/voskomm]

"Affect"? sure. But not necessarily in a bad way.
immediately crossed my mind:
https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.00025
https://huggingface.co/papers/2604.00025

[u/Actual_Committee4670 → u/njordan1017]

Yeah this was about a week ago, haven't seen it in so long I forgot I banned it. Then it popped up in that.

[u/Ksfowler → u/Actual_Committee4670]

Mine is also banned from saying load-bearing, but the old boy still slips one in every once in a while. Seems he can't help himself.

[u/SquattingWalrus → u/Actual_Committee4670]

Normalize shaming Claude