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ok, now I want to know your system prompt too...
It's quite long and ornate and I am weirdly protective of it -- it's like my intellectual DNA -- but if you send me a lightning msg w/ your email address I'll send it to you.
interesting. I can see a world where carefully crafted and effective system prompts become closely guarded valuable secrets.
I've played around with different things -- the goal is basically to convey in a way the LLM can make sense of that different parts of the prompt have different semantic functions, to be able to refer to different sections, etc. I find that Claude likes <xml_tags>the best</xml_tags> but unless the prompt is really elaborate it probably doesn't matter that much. Triple-quotes were easier this time since I was doing it on my phone and lack the patience.
I find that Claude likes <xml_tags>the best</xml_tags>
I personally stopped using XML and now use markdown break, like so:
<quote>
----
<instruction>because it is more portable across models.
But, for Claude, I can see how XML works best - they've really optimized for tool calls and feedback.
User prompt follows. (Note that I have a v elaborate system prompt, so you should expect differences if you try to replicate.)
Here's a snippet from a message board wrt rare earths:
"""
Good article posted earlier today here on that. Basically, the human and environmental cost of extracting them is high, so we've outsourced the despoilage to China. If we want to turn vast swathes of America into toxic shotholes, we too can have rare earths production.
reply
100 sats \ 1 reply \ @SimpleStacker 1h
IIRC there's a common historical theme in which the hegemon outsources the unpleasant tasks (like resource extraction and warfighting) to third-world cultures, while members of the hegemonic culture devote their time to more enjoyable pursuits, like food and entertainment.
But over time, this not only integrates the third world cultures into the production systems and power centers of the hegemon, but it also makes it so that the dominant culture becomes dependent on the third worlders, which eventually leads to the third world culture taking over the dominant culture. I think I read that this happened with Rome and the Germanic tribes, or something like that.
"""
Can you give historical examples of a powerful nation "outsourcing" terrible work to a weaker one? Ideally, where the consequences of this turn out to give the weaker nation a strategic advantage over the stronger one?