I get by because I also have long-term memory, and experience, and I can learn. LLMs have none of that, and every new session is rebuilding the world anew.

And even my short-term memory is significantly larger than the at most 50% of the 200k-token context window that Claude has. It runs out of context before my short-term memory is probably not even 1% full, for the same task (and I'm capable of more context-switching in the meantime).

And so even the "Opus 4.5 really is at a new tier" runs into the very same limitations all models have been running into since the beginning.

▲ scotty79 2 days ago | parent [-]

> LLMs have none of that, and every new session is rebuilding the world anew.

For LLMs long term memory is achieved by tooling. Which you discounted in your previous comments.

You also overstimate capacity of your short-term memory by few orders of magnitude:

https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/articles/short-term-me...

▲ troupo 2 days ago | parent [-]

> For LLMs long term memory is achieved by tooling. Which you discounted in your previous comments.

My specific complaint, which is an observable fact about "Opus 4.5 is next tier": it has the same crippled context that degrades the quality of the model as soon as it fills 50%.

EMM_386: no-no-no, it's not crippled. All you have to do is keep track across multiple files, clear out context often, feed very specific information not to overflow context.

Me: so... it's crippled, and you need multiple workarounds

scotty79: After all it's the same as your own short-term memory, and <some unspecified tooling (I guess those same files)> provide long-term memory for LLMs.

Me: Your comparison is invalid because I can go have lunch, and come back to the problem at hand and continue where I left off. "Next tier Opus 4.5" will have to be fed the entire world from scratch after a context clear/compact/in a new session.

Unless, of course, you meant to say that "next tier Opus model" only has 15-30 second short term memory, and needs to keep multiple notes around like the guy from Memento. Which... makes it crippled.

▲ scotty79 2 days ago | parent [-]

If you refuse to use what you call workarounds and I call long term memory then you end up with a guy from Memento and regardless of how smart the model is it can end up making same mistakes. And that's why you can't tell the difference between smarter and dumber one while others can.

▲ recursive 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

I think the premise is that if it was the "next tier" than you wouldn't need to use these workarounds.

▲ troupo 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

> If you refuse to use what you call workarounds

Who said I refuse them?

I evaluated the claim that Opus is somehow next tier/something different/amazeballs future at its face value. It still has all the same issues and needs all the same workarounds as whatever I was using two months ago (I had a bit of a coding hiatus between beginning of December and now).

> then you end up with a guy from Memento and regardless of how smart the model is

Those models are, and keep being the guy from memento. Your "long memory" is nothing but notes scribbled everywhere that you have to re-assemble every time.

> And that's why you can't tell the difference between smarter and dumber one while others can.

If it was "next tier smarter" it wouldn't need the exact same workarounds as the "dumber" models. You wouldn't compare the context to the 15-30 second short-term memory and need unspecified tools [1] to have "long-term memory". You wouldn't have the model behave in an indistinguishable way from a "dumber" model after half of its context windows has been filled. You wouldn't even think about context windows. And yet here we are

[1] For each person these tools will be a different collection of magic incantations. From scattered .md files to slop like Beads to MCP servers providing access to various external storage solutions to custom shell scripts to ...

BTW, I still find "superpowers" from https://github.com/obra/superpowers to be the single best improvement to Claude (and other providers) even if it's just another in a long serious of magic chants I've evaluated.

▲ scotty79 a day ago | parent [-]

> Those models are, and keep being the guy from memento. Your "long memory" is nothing but notes scribbled everywhere that you have to re-assemble every time.

That's exactly how the long term memory works in humans as well. The fact that some of these scribbles are done chemically in the same organ that does the processing doesn't make it much better. Human memories are reassembled at recall (often inaccurately). And humans also scribble when they try to solve a problem that exceeds their short term memory.

> If it was "next tier smarter" it wouldn't need the exact same workarounds as the "dumber" models.

This is akin to opposing calling processor next tier because it still needs RAM and bus to communicate with it and SSD as well. You think it should have everything in cache to be worthy of calling it next tier.

It's fine to have your own standards for applying words. But expect further confusion and miscommunication with other people if don't intend to realign.

▲ troupo a day ago | parent [-]

> That's exactly how the long term memory works in humans as well.

Where this is applicable when is you go away from a problem for a while. And yet I don't lose the entire context and have to rebuild it from scratch when I go for lunch, for example.

Models have to rebuild the entire world from scratch for every small task.

> This is akin to opposing calling processor next tier because it still needs RAM and bus to communicate with it and SSD as well.

You're so lost in your own metaphor that it makes no sense.

> You think it should have everything in cache to be worthy of calling it next tier.

No. "Next tier" implies something significantly and observably better. I don't. And here you are trying to tell me "if you use all the exact same tools that you have already used before with 'previous tier models' you will see it is somehow next tier".

If your "next tier" needs an equator-length list of caveats and all the same tools, it's not next tier is it?

BTW. I'm literally coding with this "next tier" tool with "long memory just like people". After just doing the "plan/execute/write notes" bullshit incantations I had to correct it:

    You're right, I fucked up on all three counts:

    1. FileDetails - I should have WIRED IT UP, not deleted it. 
       It's a useful feature to preview file details before playing.
       I treated "unused" as "unwanted" instead of "not yet connected".
  
    2. Worktree not merged - Complete oversight. Did all the work but
       didn't finish the job.
  
    3. _spacing - Lazy fix. Should have analyzed why it exists and either
      used it or removed the layout constraint entirely.

So next tier. So long memory. So person-like.

Oh. Within about 10 seconds after that it started compacting the "non-crippled" context window and immediately forgot most of what it had just been doing. So I had to clear out the context and teach it the world from the start again.

Edit. And now this amazing next tier model completely ignored that there already exists code to discover network interfaces, and wrote bullshit code calling CLI tools from Rust. So once again it needed to be reminded of this.

> It's fine to have your own standards for applying words. But expect further confusion and miscommunication with other people if don't intend to realign.

I mean, just like crypto bros before them, AI bros do sure love to invent their own terminology and their own realities that have nothing to do with anything real and observable.

	▲	scotty79 a day ago \| parent [-]
		> "You're right, I fucked up on all three counts:" It very well might be that AI tools are not for you, if you are getting such poor results with your methods of approaching them. If you would like to improve your outcomes at some point, ask people who achieve better results for pointers and try them out. Here's a freebie, never tell AI it fucked up.