If you ask me to write an email, all 3 variations will be more or less the same, except it will almost always improve with each iteration. 3 cracks at a prompt is 3 separate, unrelated attempts. None of them informs the other. In fact, you run the risk of making it worse if you include previous versions.
> 3 cracks at a prompt is 3 separate, unrelated attempts. None of them informs the other.
Thats where the "skill" part comes in. Like your 3 attempts at email that `almost always improve`. This is where you input the "previous versions", not directly back into the model. It's the "soft skill" of being flexible and adjusting based on how an entity responds to the input. Not learning how to adjust the input (by using previous attempts to inform the next) to more optimally direct the output given the state of the llm (chat? agent? model, effort lvl etc) it will seem chaotic.
The skills wont make an llm* deterministic, same as applying these soft skills to people. Give the same input to a person in `3 times separate, unrelated attempts` you are likely to get 3 different seemly chaotic outcomes. The "skill" is in being able to take what you received as output the first time, and make adjustments based on previous attempts while accounting for the state of the entity for the next attempt.
* In no way am I saying they are conscious beings or whatever nonsense by using people in the analogy. There are, however, parallels in how a set of soft skills (and this is why they are "soft" skills) can be used to get more optimal results from an entity that should never be expected to act as a pure function.