I think people get into a dopamine hit loop with agents and are so high on dopamine because its giving them output that simulates progress that they don't see reality about where they are at. It is SO DAMN GOOD AT OUTPUT. Agents love to output, it is very easy to think its inventing physics.

Obviously my subjective experience

Ironic that I’m going to give another anecdotal experience here, but I’ve noticed this myself too. I catch myself trying to keep on prompting after an llm has not been able to solve some problem in a specific way. While I can probably do it faster at that point if I switch to doing it fully myself. Maybe because the llm output feels like its ‘almost there’, or some sunken cost fallacy.

> I think people get into a dopamine hit loop

I also think that's the case, but I'm open to the idea that there are people that are really really good at this and maybe they are indeed 10x.

My experience is that for SOME tasks LLMs help a lot, but overall nowhere near 10x.

Consistently it's probably.... ~1X.

The difference is I procrastinate a lot and LLMs actually help me not procrastinate BECAUSE of that dopamine kick and I'm confident I will figure it out with an LLM.

I'm sure there are many people who got to a conclusion on their to-do projects with the help of LLMs and without them, because of procrastination or whatever, they would not have had a chance to.

It doesn't mean they're now rich, because most projects won't make you rich or make you any money regardless if you finish them or not

You nailed it - like posting on social media and getting dopamine hits as you get likes and comments. Maybe that's what has got all these vibe coders hooked.