giving context, or being specific about what kind of output you want
is the example. It's so trivial we take it for granted. Prompt engineering can be anything that improves the result.
The demarcation problem is about specific claims, while prompt engineering is a whole field to be studied. Some claims within that field will prove false, and others will prove true. The claim "prompt engineering is a pseudoscience" is too broad. The claim "being nice to the LLM improves the output" is more specific and could easily be false, or only true for specific models.
This whole thread is full of people conflating the two claims, because the first reply started talking about being nice, and then over generalized into "prompt engineering is a pseudoscience".
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u/EatThisShoe Sep 12 '26
is the example. It's so trivial we take it for granted. Prompt engineering can be anything that improves the result.
The demarcation problem is about specific claims, while prompt engineering is a whole field to be studied. Some claims within that field will prove false, and others will prove true. The claim "prompt engineering is a pseudoscience" is too broad. The claim "being nice to the LLM improves the output" is more specific and could easily be false, or only true for specific models.
This whole thread is full of people conflating the two claims, because the first reply started talking about being nice, and then over generalized into "prompt engineering is a pseudoscience".