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AstroBenlast Friday at 12:07 AM2 repliesview on HN

I don't get it? Yes you should require a valid reason before believing something

The only objective measures I've seen people attempt to take have at best shown no productivity loss:

https://substack.com/home/post/p-172538377

https://metr.org/blog/2025-07-10-early-2025-ai-experienced-o...

This matches my own experience using agents, although I'm actually secretly optimistic about learning to use it well


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johnfnlast Friday at 12:56 AM

The burden you are placing is too high here. Do you demand controlled trials for everything you do or else you refuse to use it or accept that other people might see productivity gains? Do you demand studies showing that static typing is productive? Syntax highlighting? IDEs or Vim? Unit testing? Whatever language you use?

Obviously not? It would be absurd to walk into a thread about Rust and say “Rust doesn’t increase your productivity and unless you can produce a study proving it does then your own personal anecdotes are worthless.”

Why the increased demand for rigor when it comes to AI specifically?

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nfw2last Friday at 12:15 AM

Why do you believe that the sky is blue? What randomized trial with proper statistical controls has shown this to be true?

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