It’s funny that many of us say please. I don’t think it impacts the output, but it also feels wrong without it sometimes.

Depends on the model, but e.g. [1] found many models perform better if you are more polite. Though interestingly being rude can also sometimes improve performance at the cost of higher bias

Intuitively it makes sense. The best sources tend to be either of moderately high politeness (professional language) or 4chan-like (rude, biased but honest)

1: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2402.14531

When I want an LLM to be be brief, I will say things like "be brief", "don't ramble", etc.

When that fails, "shut the fuck up" always seems to do the trick.

I ripped into cursor today. It didn't change anything but I felt better lmao

Bevore GPT5 was released I already had the feeling like the webui response was declining and I started to try to get more out of the responses and dissing it and saying how useless their response was did actually improve the output (I think).

The way I think of it, talking to an LLM is a bit like talking to myself or listening to an echo, since what I get back depends only on what I put in. If it senses that I'm frustrated, it will be inclined to make even more stuff up in an attempt to appease me, so that gets me nowhere.

I've found it more useful to keep it polite and "professional" and restart the conversation if we've begun going around in circles.

And besides, if I make a habit of behaving badly with LLMs, there's a good chance that I'll do it without thinking at some point and get in trouble.

It's a good habit to build now in case AGI actually happens out of the blue.