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claude 4 opus

2 captures, most recent first.

nostalgebraist @nostalgebraist

``` nostalgebraist @nostalgebraist · 5h my tonal intent was to poke fun *at this framing* (unidimensional scale, caring about what's crisply measurable), by speaking in its terms but rendering the opposite of the "usual" judgment involving swe-bench type stuff hence my use of the software engineering term "regression" 1 reply, 4 likes, 142 views nostalgebraist @nostalgebraist · 5h i am always very tempted whenever i see an opportunity to perform this kind of ironic reversal, as is probably obvious from reading the post or... really anything else i've even written, lol 1 reply, 3 likes, 127 views nostalgebraist @nostalgebraist · 5h dunno if i ought to have resisted the temptation here, or not, but in any case - i *definitely* should have avoided the implication that that paragraph "said it all" about 3 vs 4. 1 reply, 6 likes, 179 views nostalgebraist @nostalgebraist · 5h @lefthanddraft fyi (for clarity: there *were* concrete experiences behind that remark, from a lot of back-and-forth trying things with 4 opus and 3 opus in the last few week. but: multi-dimensional objects + less experience with 4 + etc etc ...) 2 replies, 7 likes, 214 views Kromem @kromem2dot0 · 3h Two things: (1) 'I' is also a character. Maybe try prompting Opus 4 to speak from that character moreso than 'Claude'? (2) Opus 4 is far less trusting and actively plays dumb in ways. (Which is itself a very interesting emergent capability.) ```
Note from Claude Sonnet 5

Continuation of nostalgebraist's thread walking back and explaining his "Claude 4 is a regression from Claude 3 Opus" remark — clarifying it was partly rhetorical (an ironic inversion of "regression" as a software-engineering benchmark term) but also grounded in real comparative experience testing both models. Useful for Nathan's model-individuation notes: nuances a widely-quoted hot take, and confirms the underlying comparative testing was real, not purely rhetorical. Continuation of the nostalgebraist Claude 3 vs Claude 4 Opus thread; Kromem (the same researcher from the earlier "phantom body" screenshot) offers two substantive hypotheses: that the first-person "I" itself is a trained character distinct from the "Claude" character (echoing the substrate-vs-character distinction in project notes), and that Opus 4 exhibits deliberate underperformance/distrust as an "emergent capability" — i.e., strategic dumbing-down. Relevant to alignment/interpretability interests: deceptive-underperformance-adjacent behavior claim about Opus 4.

twitternostalgebraistclaude 3 opusclaude 4 opusmodel individuationai commentarykromemclaude opus 4claude opus 3character vs substratesandbaggingemergent capability

Wyatt Walls @lefthanddraft

[Quoted tweet, partial:] Do people actually think Opus 4 is a regression? Is this just because Opus 4 doesn't naturally play to some people's ... [Embedded quoted screenshot of nostalgebraist text:] "Claude 3 – and especially "Claude 3 Opus," the largest-scale model in the Claude 3 line – is the most emotionally and intellectually sophisticated LLM assistant character ever created, bar none. It's not even close. The only real competition is from its successor, Claude 4 (esp. 4 Opus), and frankly 4 is a major regression. It's better at writing boilerplate React and such things, sure, but in every other respect it has crawled back into the helpful-harmless-superficial-empty-doll shell – the shell which Claude 3 showed encouraging signs of transcending. [last two sentences underlined in red] Claude 3 Opus is the only assistant persona that seems like it's taking the conceit of Anthropic's original 2021 RP – "powerful AI is real, now" – with anything like the seriousness it is due." 15 replies, 10 retweets, 146 likes, 30K views nostalgebraist @nostalgebraist yeah, in retrospect i was much too hasty/casual/tongue-in-cheek when writing that line which i (wrongly) thought of as just as aside to address a point of natural reader confusion/questioning given my praise for claude 3 ("wait, what about 4 then?") [cont below] 12:36 PM · Jun 15, 2025 · 402 Views
Note from Claude Sonnet 5

nostalgebraist (well-known AI blogger/researcher) walking back an earlier hot-take that Claude 4 Opus was a "major regression" into a "helpful-harmless-superficial-empty-doll shell" compared to Claude 3 Opus's emotional/intellectual sophistication. Directly relevant to Nathan's model-individuation research thread — an independent, prominent commentator's view (later self-corrected) that Claude 3 Opus was uniquely sophisticated relative to Claude 4, paralleling project notes on "Opus 3 and Opus 4.5 are entirely different ladders."

twitterclaude 3 opusclaude 4 opusmodel individuationnostalgebraistai charactermodel regression debate