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"Token anxiety", a slot machine by any other name

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Re: "Token anxiety", a slot machine by any other name

#51

Post by shaokind »

mikkupikku wrote: post #39
shaokind wrote: post #14

One of my recent thoughts is that Claude Code has become the most successful agent partially because it is more of a black box than previous implementations of the agent pattern: the actual code changes aren't shoved in your face like Cursor (used to be), they are hidden away. You focus more on the result rather than the code building up that result, and so you get into the "just one more feature" mindset a lot more,…

It's because claude code will test its work and adjust the code accordingly. The old way, with the way Cursor used to be or the way I used to copy and paste code from ChatGPT doesn't work because to iterate in towards a working solution requires too much human effort, making the whole thing pointless.

Cursor & its various clones (Cline, Roo Cline/Code) did that too, before Claude Code was even released.

Re: "Token anxiety", a slot machine by any other name

#52

Post by scuff3d »

ctoth wrote: post #11

The gambling analogy completely falls apart on inspection. Slot machines have variable reward schedules by design — every element is optimized to maximize time on device. Social media optimizes for engagement, and compulsive behavior is the predictable output. The optimization target produces the addiction. What's Anthropic's optimization target??? Getting you the right answer as fast as possible! The variability in…

Right. A platform who makes money the more you have to use it is definitely optimizing to get you the right answer in as few tokens as possible.

There is absolutely no incentive to do that, for any of these companies. The incentive is to make the model just bad enough you keep coming back, but not so bad you go to a competitor.

We've already seen this play out. We know Google made their search results worse to drive up and revenue. Exact same incentives are at play here, only worse.

Re: "Token anxiety", a slot machine by any other name

#53

Post by r00tanon »

simonw wrote: post #2

I know it's popular comparing coding agents to slot machines right now, but the comparison doesn't entirely hold for me. It's more like being hooked on a slot machine which pays out 95% of the time because you know how to trick it. (I saw "no actual evidence pointing to these improvements" with a footnote and didn't even need to click that footnote to know it was the METR thing. I wish AI holdouts would find a few mo…

I was going to mention Yegge's recent blog posts mirroring this phenomena.

There's also this article on hbr.org https://hbr.org/2026/02/ai-doesnt-reduce-work-it-intensifies...

This is a real thing, and it looks like classic addiction.

Re: "Token anxiety", a slot machine by any other name

#54

Post by squeaky-clean »

outofpaper wrote: post #27
ctoth wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sometimes I will go out and I will plant a pepper plant and take care of it all summer long and obsessively ensure it has precisely the right amount of water and compost and so on... and ... for some reason (maybe I was on vacation and it got over 105 degrees?) I don't get a good crop. Does this mean I should not garden because it's a variable reward? Of course not. Sometimes I will go out fishing and I won't catch a…

??? I'm pretty sure you know what the differences are. Go touch grass and tell me it's the same as looking at a plant on a screen. Dealing with organic and natural systems will, most of the time, have a variable reward. The real issue comes from systems and services designed to only be accessible through intermittent variable rewards. Oh, and don't confuse Claude's artifacts working most of the time with them actuall…

So gambling is fine as long as I'm doing it outside. Poker in a casino? Bad. Poker in a foresty meadow, good. Got it.

Re: "Token anxiety", a slot machine by any other name

#56

Post by Aurornis »

BoxFour wrote: post #24

I wish the author had stuck to the salient point about work/life balance instead of drifting into the gambling tangent, because the core message is actually more unsettling. With the tech job market being rough and AI tools making it so frictionless to produce real output, the line between work time and personal time is basically disappearing. To the bluesky poster's point: Pulling out a laptop at a party feels awkwa…

> With the tech job market being rough and AI tools making it so frictionless to produce real output, the line between work time and personal time is basically disappearing.

This isn't generally true at all. The "all tech companies are going to 996" meme comes up a lot here but all of the links and anecdotes go back to the same few sources.

It is very true that the tech job market is competitive again after the post-COVID period where virtually nobody was getting fired and jobs were easy to find.

I do not think it's true that the median or even 90th percentile tech job is becoming so overbearing that personal time is disappearing. If you're at a job where they're trying to normalize overwork as something everyone is doing, they're just lying to you to extract more work.

Re: "Token anxiety", a slot machine by any other name

#57

Post by biophysboy »

baq wrote: post #42
biophysboy wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does it get numbers right? One of the mistakes it made in reading the paper was swapping sets of numbers from the primary/secondary outcomes.

it does get screenshots right for me, but obviously I haven't tried on your specific paper. I can only recommend trying it out, it's also has a much more generous limits in the $20 tier than opus.

I see. To clarify, it parsed numbers in the pdf correct, but assigned them the wrong meaning. I was wondering if codex is better at interpreting non text data

Re: "Token anxiety", a slot machine by any other name

#58

Post by ctoth »

scuff3d wrote: post #52
ctoth wrote: post #11

The gambling analogy completely falls apart on inspection. Slot machines have variable reward schedules by design — every element is optimized to maximize time on device. Social media optimizes for engagement, and compulsive behavior is the predictable output. The optimization target produces the addiction. What's Anthropic's optimization target??? Getting you the right answer as fast as possible! The variability in…

Right. A platform who makes money the more you have to use it is definitely optimizing to get you the right answer in as few tokens as possible. There is absolutely no incentive to do that, for any of these companies. The incentive is to make the model just bad enough you keep coming back, but not so bad you go to a competitor. We've already seen this play out. We know Google made their search results worse to drive…

Please go read how the Anthropic max plan works.

IF I USE LESS TOKENS, ANTHROPIC GETS MORE MONEY! You are blindly pattern matching to "corporation bad!" without actually considering the underlying structure of the situation. I believe there's a phrase for this to do with probabilistic avians?

Re: "Token anxiety", a slot machine by any other name

#59

Post by mikkupikku »

squeaky-clean wrote: post #54
outofpaper wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

??? I'm pretty sure you know what the differences are. Go touch grass and tell me it's the same as looking at a plant on a screen. Dealing with organic and natural systems will, most of the time, have a variable reward. The real issue comes from systems and services designed to only be accessible through intermittent variable rewards. Oh, and don't confuse Claude's artifacts working most of the time with them actuall…

So gambling is fine as long as I'm doing it outside. Poker in a casino? Bad. Poker in a foresty meadow, good. Got it.

Basically true tbqh. Poker is maybe the one exception, but you're almost always better off gambling "in the wild" e.g. poker night with your buds instead of playing slots or anything else where "the house" is always winning in the long run. Are your losses still circulating in your local community, or have they been siphoned off by shareholders on the other side of the world? Gambling with friends is just swapping money back and forth, but going to a casino might as well be lighting the money on fire.
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