Comment by evanelias
3 days ago
Here's a scary thought, which I'm admittedly basing on absolutely nothing scientific:
What if agentic coding sessions are triggering a similar dopamine feedback loop as social media apps? Obviously not to the same degree as social media apps, I mean coding for work is still "work"... but there's maybe some similarity in getting iterative solutions from the agent, triggering something in your brain each time, yes?
If that was the case, wouldn't we expect developers to have an overly positive perception of AI because they're literally becoming addicted to it?
> The LLMentalist Effect: how chat-based Large Language Models replicate the mechanisms of a psychic’s con
https://softwarecrisis.dev/letters/llmentalist/
Plus there's a gambling mechanic: Push the button, sometimes get things for free.
This is very interesting and disturbing. We are outsourcing our decision making to an algorithmic “Mentalist” and will reap a terrible reward. I need to ween myself off the comforting teat of the chatbot psychic.
Like the feeling of the command line being always faster than using the GUI? Different ways we engage with a task can change our time perception.
I wish there was a simple way to measure energy spent instead of time. Maybe nature is just optimizing for something else.
What if agentic coding results in _less_ dopamine than manual coding? Because honestly I think that's more likely and jives with my experience.
There's no flow state to be achieved with AI tools (at the moment)
With manual coding, the big dopamine hit comes at the end of a task - that's your internal feeling of reward for completing something.
I would think this could contrast with agentic coding, where the AI keeps generating code, and then you iterate on this process to get the AI to fix its mistakes. With normal human code review, it takes longer to get revisions and can feel like a slog. But with AI that's a much tighter loop, so maybe developers feel extra productive from all these dopamine hits from each interaction with the agent.
When manually coding and in flow state I'd think it's a more consistent level of arousal, less spiky. Probably varies by person and coding style though, which might also explain why some people love TDD and others can't stand it?
This is fascinating and would go a long ways to explain why people seem to have totally different experiences with the same machines.
That's my suspicion to.
My issue with this being a 'negative' thing is that I'm not sure it is. It works off of the same hunting / foraging instincts that keep us alive. If you feel addiction to something positive, it is bad?
Social media is negative because it addicts you to mostly low quality filler content. Content that doesn't challenge you. You are reading shit posts instead of reading a book or doing something with better for you in the long run.
One could argue that's true for AI, but I'm not confident enough to make such a statement.
The study found AI caused a "significant slowdown" in developer efficiency though, so that doesn't seem positive!