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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

#241

Post by jrflowers »

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…

> What's Anthropic's optimization target???

It is a business that sells monthly subscriptions

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

#242

Post by globular-toast »

notrustincloud wrote: post #240
globular-toast wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No technology so far has reduced the amount of time we spend working. If anything it's increased. A few decades ago it was common for a household to have only one adult in the labour market, now it's common to have two. The work around the house hasn't gone away, of course. People are already at the point they could be working a fraction of the time they do, but they continue to work full time, producing shit they do…

consuming things they dont need or working double time to cover basic housing, food, and healthcare ?

Most people in developed countries are well above poverty. According to one study[0], 99% of Americans have at least one streaming subscription.

In Europe most people get healthcare free at the point of use.

We easily produce what we need and could probably go completely sustainable if people weren't addicted to working and making more stuff. How do we make sustainability as satisfying as building?

[0] https://www.forbes.com/home-improvement/internet/streaming-s...

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

#243

Post by r_lee »

crystal_revenge wrote: post #82
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…

> What's Anthropic's optimization target??? Getting you the right answer as fast as possible! What makes you believe this? The current trend in all major providers seem to be: get you to spin up as many agents as possible so that you can get billed more and their number of requests goes up. > Slot machines have variable reward schedules by design LLMs by all major providers are optimized used RLHF where they are opti…

I'm also seeing a lot of new rambling in Sonnet 4.6 when compared to 4.5, more markdown slop and pointing out details and things in the context which isn't too useful etc...

which then causes increased token usage because you need to prompt multiple times.

Idk, maybe it's just me though.

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

#244

Post by irishcoffee »

tokioyoyo wrote: post #238
irishcoffee wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s so dope excel finally let old people learn this! They removed the agelock?!

Come on man, you know exactly what I mean. You can keep coming up with these arguments, but the world has moved on already. I genuinely don’t know a single person in 3 different countries from age 12+ who does not use LLMs at least once a week. We have to adapt, or choose to not play the “game”.

Your counter to "excel was never hard to learn" is "people use LLMs all day long" ??

I uh, think the LLM use has compromised your critical thinking skills.

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

#245

Post by whattheheckheck »

dymk wrote: post #193
philipwhiuk wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dating apps also have cut-throat competition and none of them are optimised for minimising the time you spend on the app.

They don’t, they’re all owned by Match group

So why can't a better one start?

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

#246

Post by dymk »

whattheheckheck wrote: post #245
dymk wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They don’t, they’re all owned by Match group

So why can't a better one start?

Because Match buys them out. PoF, Tinder, Hinge started independent, and were bought by Match once they showed promise.

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

#247

Post by hyperadvanced »

jazzyjackson wrote: post #72
hyperadvanced wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I catch enough of these weird things where I don’t fully understand why it chose to do something, but understand that there’s a simpler way, where I tend to be skeptical of using it for anything I couldn’t do myself but am just too lazy to go in and punch the keys for. On that front, it’s great

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

#248

Post by mejutoco »

ctoth wrote: post #22
CGMthrowaway wrote: post #18

Earlier 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…

Not OP, but they said:

> Intermittent variable rewards ... will induce compulsive behavior

As a dog owner this is why you need to give a variable amount of treats (sometimes zero) to your dog when they obey a command, for the "jackpot effect".

For example, if I land a trick while skating it gives me a boost. Is that addictive behaviour? not sure. It gets me to exercise.

My point is that variability is probably part of what gets you back to pepper planting and fishing. Intermittent variable rewards reinforcing a behaviour seems to be a fact. If this is good or bad regarding a specific activity is left as an exercise for the reader.

EDIT: grammar

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

#249

Post by shafyy »

co_king_5 wrote: post #201
shafyy wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I bet that the actual "performance" of all the top-tier providers is so similar, that branding has bigger impact on if you think Claude or ChatGPT peforms better.

[dead]

Your cousin sounds like a solid dude, haha
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