The Zeno's Paradox of AI
negativezone.github.io
The Zeno's Paradox of AI
1–7 of 7 posts
Re: The Zeno's Paradox of AI
#2There's a crass Zeno's Paradox joke involving an engineer, the devil, a pretty lady and a football field: the punch line being something like "I know the paradox but can get close enough to do what I got to do."
Regarding TODOs in code I really like the philosophy of including a ticket with each todo item and pasting the ticket url in the todo for follow up and accountability... YMMV
Re: The Zeno's Paradox of AI
#3It’s true that Claude Code will continue to suggest further things to do, seemingly forever. But I’ve never had an issue making the call of “this is good enough” or “that’s not necessary right now”. If you have a clear idea of what you want to accomplish, it’s easy to get a task 100% completely done with just a few prompts. There’s only a paradox if you don’t have a clear end state in mind and let the agent continually move the goal post of what “done” means.
Re: The Zeno's Paradox of AI
#4There's a crass Zeno's Paradox joke involving an engineer, the devil, a pretty lady and a football field: the punch line being something like "I know the paradox but can get close enough to do what I got to do." Regarding TODOs in code I really like the philosophy of including a ticket with each todo item and pasting the ticket url in the todo for follow up and accountability... YMMV
It's a wonder how far one can get in wrangling AI coding agents by using industry standard project management principles and being articulate about one's requirements and goals.
Re: The Zeno's Paradox of AI
#5It’s true that Claude Code will continue to suggest further things to do, seemingly forever. But I’ve never had an issue making the call of “this is good enough” or “that’s not necessary right now”. If you have a clear idea of what you want to accomplish, it’s easy to get a task 100% completely done with just a few prompts. There’s only a paradox if you don’t have a clear end state in mind and let the agent continual…
I'm with you. It's just that I'd had enough conversations with the bot interrupted by "honest caveats" and "actual gaps" that I needed to vent, and then felt the irrational desire to intellectualize said venting.
It inspired the plugin, so ya know, it wasn't a complete waste.
Re: The Zeno's Paradox of AI
#6It’s true that Claude Code will continue to suggest further things to do, seemingly forever. But I’ve never had an issue making the call of “this is good enough” or “that’s not necessary right now”. If you have a clear idea of what you want to accomplish, it’s easy to get a task 100% completely done with just a few prompts. There’s only a paradox if you don’t have a clear end state in mind and let the agent continual…
Opus 4.8 would say "it's done now". 5.0 just keeps suggesting more and more changes with diminishing returns.
Re: The Zeno's Paradox of AI
#7Thanks for sharing that experience, i often wondered whether I'm alone being lead on ad infinitum.
BUT - i wrote a small tool recently where scope and environment was set and i wrote the code myself so just wanted a security check. I followed through with all suggestions just to see if it may end - ...
it does!! After adding XSS, CSRF and fixing all undefined edge cases it was actually happy!
So i'd say yes if you define the scope clearly then it will get you there.