And a related issue that if you have a coding plan with time based limits they there is pressure to make maximum use of it
"Token anxiety", a slot machine by any other name
71–80 of 249 posts
Re: "Token anxiety", a slot machine by any other name
#72Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Step 4: stop the robot when it's making a dumb decision Yeah I can't stop myself when I'm about to make a dumb decision, just look at my github repo. I ported Forth to a 1980s sampler and wrote DSP code on an 8-bit Arduino. How am I going to stop a robot making dumb decisions? Also, this all sounds like I'm doing a lot of skivvy work typing stuff in (which I hate) and not actually writing much code (which is the bi…
The robot will output text like “Oh, I see, the user wants me to make a Lovecraftian horror with asynchronous subprocess calls instead of HTTP endpoints, so I better suggest we reinstall the dependencies that are already installed so we can sacrifice this project to Mammoth” It is at this point where you can say “NONONO YOU ABSOLUTE DONKEY stop that we just want a FastAPI endpoint!!” And it will go “You’re absolutely…
Correct.
I did waste about 20 minutes trying to do a recursive link following crawl (to write each rendered page to file), because Opus wanted to write a ruby task to do it. It wasn’t working so I googled it and found out link following is a built in feature of cURL…
Re: "Token anxiety", a slot machine by any other name
#73Earlier quoted context omitted.
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?
As an investor in Anthropic which pricing strategy would you support? That's the question you need to ask, not what there current pricing strategy in the win the market phase happens to be.
Re: "Token anxiety", a slot machine by any other name
#74Earlier quoted context omitted.
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?
The Max plan has usage limits, and you can buy more... Which is exactly what I'm talking about...
And the incentive is even strong for the lower tiers. They want answers to be just good enough to keep you using it, but bad enough that you're pushed towards buying the higher tier.
Re: "Token anxiety", a slot machine by any other name
#75Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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. Intermittent variable rewards, whether produced by design or merely as a byproduct, will induce compulsive be…
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…
Are you a pepper farmer taking this approach to feed your family,
or a hobbyist gardener?
Re: "Token anxiety", a slot machine by any other name
#76The 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…
> What's Anthropic's optimization target??? Getting you the right answer as fast as possible!
That is a generous interpretation. Mighr be correct. But they dont make as much money if you quickly get the right answer. They make more money if you spend as many tokens as possible being on that "maybe next time" hook.
Im not saying theyre actually optimizng for that. But charlie munger said "show me the incentives, and ill show you the outcome"
Re: "Token anxiety", a slot machine by any other name
#77Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's a not a binary thing, it's a spectrum. There are many elements of uncertainty in every action imaginable. I'm inclined to agree with the other commenter though, the LLM slot machine is absolutely closer on that spectrum to gambling than your example is. Anthropic's optimization target is getting you to spend tokens, not produce the right answer. It's to produce an answer plausible enough but incomplete enough th…
im on a subscription though. they want me to not spend tokens. that way my subscription makes money for them rather than costing them electricity and degrading their GPUs
For subscription isers, anthropic makes mkre money if you hit your usage limit and wonder idlf the next plan, or switching to tokens would be better. Especially given the FOMO you probably have from all these posts talking about peoples productivity
Re: "Token anxiety", a slot machine by any other name
#78Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's a not a binary thing, it's a spectrum. There are many elements of uncertainty in every action imaginable. I'm inclined to agree with the other commenter though, the LLM slot machine is absolutely closer on that spectrum to gambling than your example is. Anthropic's optimization target is getting you to spend tokens, not produce the right answer. It's to produce an answer plausible enough but incomplete enough th…
> Anthropic's optimization target is getting you to spend tokens, not produce the right answer. The majority of us are using their subscription plans with flat rate fees. Their incentive is the precise opposite of what you say. The less we use the product, the more they benefit. It's like a gym membership. I think all of the gambling addiction analogies in this thread are just so strained that I can't take them serio…
Thats a bit naive. Anthropic makes way more money if they gey you to use past your plans limit and wonder if you should get the next tier or switch to tokens
Re: "Token anxiety", a slot machine by any other name
#79This is simply yet another outdated analogy from haters that are failing to keep pace with the current frontier because they are too busy getting high on the anti-hype.
We’re well past the need to retry the same prompt multiple times in order to get working code. The models with their harnesses are properly agentic now, they can find the right context, make a plan, write the code, run the tests and fix the bugs with little to no intervention from a human.
The hardest part now is keeping up with them when it comes to approving the deliverables and updating the architecture and spec as new things are discovered by using the software. Not new bugs but corrections to your own assumptions you had before the feature was built.
The hard part is almost entirely management.
That’s something to seriously think about.
Re: "Token anxiety", a slot machine by any other name
#80The 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…
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