Putting aside that I don't agree with Bram (I've been using all the Claude versions he refers to and haven't experienced this), I do think it's interesting that there is no universally perceived golden sweet spot between "sycophantic" and "rude".

Many neurotypical people call neurodiverse people (software engineers) rude, while they think they're just being direct.

Many neurodiverse people call neurotypical people sycophantic, while they think they're just being polite and friendly.

It also happens across cultures (Eastern European vs. Western European; European vs. North American).

So I can easily imagine that when you have a software tool whose interface is language, but its user base is extremely wide across both cultural lines and neurodiversity spectrum, it's going to be basically impossible to nail a sweet spot.

You make it too friendly, and the nerds get mad. You make it too adverserial, and the normies call it rude.

I wonder what kind of communicator Bram Cohen is. Is he succeptible to this? From what I heard about his career, he's always been more of a solo programmer. Has he had to interact with other humans much giving feedback? Could it be that he asked the model/tweaked his prompts to ensure directness, and now he's interpreting that directness as rudeness?

> So I can easily imagine that when you have a software tool whose interface is language, but its user base is extremely wide across both cultural lines and neurodiversity spectrum, it's going to be basically impossible to nail a sweet spot.

> You make it too friendly, and the nerds get mad. You make it too adverserial, and the normies call it rude.

Easy: let the user set for himself how the model should be aligned on this axis (with some pre-defined example setups that the user can use or use as a base for an individual alignment).

Interesting take, LLMs then have a sort of 'communication culture.'