8/21/2026 at 3:00:58 PM
Jevons Paradox [1]> when technological improvements that increase the efficiency of a resource's use lead to a rise, rather than a fall, in total consumption of that resource.
[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox
Las Vegas replaced the expensive incandescent lighting on the strip with cheaper to run LED equivalents. But the costs didn't come down because they were able to add more lights and larger displays.
I think the same will happen with tokens. As the cost of tokens comes down, these models will just consume more tokens.
by Balooga
8/21/2026 at 3:27:26 PM
> But the costs didn't come down because they were able to add more lights and larger displays.People are a gas; they expand the fill the space they're in. If you give someone a big house, they'll fill it with crap. If you make food cheap, they'll eat too much, even when it harms their health.
Making things cheaper usually just makes making them more prevalent. It's why computers are not faster than 20 years ago. They're merely more capable -- developers quickly and aggressively fill up (and overflow) all that added capability until you're back in the same place you used to be.
by everdrive
8/21/2026 at 4:56:25 PM
these things you are talking about are only true due to the unbelievably LARGE marketing ~propaganda~ spendingwhat you're saying reflects corporation tendencies
take away the propaganda, let people live, see how they react
by css_apologist
8/21/2026 at 4:59:36 PM
I'm not convinced. Propaganda only works when it relies on something that people are dispositionally inclined towards. eg: hating foreigners, calls towards group unity, etc.You can't use propaganda to trick people into becoming experts at calculus, for instance.
by everdrive
8/21/2026 at 3:34:47 PM
You're right, computers are definitely the same speed as they were 20 years ago.by vanuatu
8/21/2026 at 4:07:09 PM
20 years ago is about when SSDs came to consumer PCs. Which is the last time I remember thinking that my computer became faster than the previous one was when it was new (if by computer we mean the hardware combined with a mainstream up-to-date software stack)by wongarsu
8/21/2026 at 5:00:59 PM
You had SSDs in 2006? Was I missing out?I don't think I had any in my builds until 2014ish
by nemomarx
8/21/2026 at 4:35:15 PM
Your computer may not feel faster than a 20 year old PC, but CPUs have gotten way, way faster.Compare the AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D to the AMD A12-9800, you go from 4 cores to 8, and you double the power consumption. But it's not twice as fast. It's 10 times faster. Depending on the exact metric, it could be as little as twice as fast or as much as 1000 times faster, depending on the exact operations.
On top of that memory throughput between DDR4 and DDR6 is about 2.5 times faster as well.
Oh and this isn't 20 years apart, this is 7 years apart. 20 years will see almost an exponentially larger gap even still.
by behringer
8/21/2026 at 4:52:08 PM
I kind of hoped my point would come across more clearly. Obviously my current computer is faster than one from 20 years ago. But, it doesn't really react more quickly. It just does more: higher resolution video, advanced graphics, etc. The moment we add capability we rush to use it all up. This is not _always_ bad when it comes to computing, but I wouldn't mind if people in general had more restraint.by everdrive
8/21/2026 at 3:39:10 PM
many computers actually feel much slower than they did 20 years ago: https://danluu.com/input-lag/(...or over 40 years ago)
by LoganDark
8/21/2026 at 3:36:04 PM
Anyone not living paycheck to paycheck is just constantly gorging on fast food?by jayd16
8/21/2026 at 3:42:08 PM
I don't mean to be glib, but for the most part, yes. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/11/well/child-obesity-un-rep...Obesity is nearly everywhere. In the old days, "prosperous" might have been a euphemism for "fat," as only the rich could afford to be fat. Now even people who are "food insecure" are often quite fat. Some of this of course is due to food quality, but ultimately there are no starving fat people.
by everdrive
8/21/2026 at 4:15:03 PM
How does "people will uncontrollably eat if given the chance" turn into "there are no starving fat people".You're right that obesity is not necessarily linked to overeating . How is this relevant to your original point? Isn't it a complete contradiction to what you were saying before?
The original post was hyperbolic to the point of nonsense and now it seems we're on a completely different topic.
by jayd16
8/21/2026 at 4:28:07 PM
>You're right that obesity is not necessarily linked to overeatingThis can be true, but I think some people are confused. The vast majority of the time, it is linked to overeating. There are some edge cases where there is something else going on metabolically, but most people do over eat.
by everdrive
8/21/2026 at 5:10:41 PM
> ultimately there are no starving fat peopleIt has been credibly hypothesized that fat people are indeed malnourished. What would you do if all your food sources were appallingly lacking in essential nutrients and the sorts of things your body craved in order to get fed? You would begin to eat more, and more and more, seeking to satisfy those cravings for nutrition. But if nutritional cravings aren't satisfied, you're still reaching for those foods, because they are faking, very accurately, the tastes and feels that you would get from something that's nutritious and good for you.
So, it stands to reason: the more fake nutrition available to someone, the more they will try and eat, and get fatter. On the other hand, if we're eating real food, perhaps those cravings will be easier to satisfy without overindulging?
by ButlerianJihad
8/21/2026 at 5:23:27 PM
>What would you do if all your food sources were appallingly lacking in essential nutrients and the sorts of things your body craved in order to get fed?When I hit 300 lbs I might suspect there was a flaw in my reasoning.
by everdrive
8/21/2026 at 3:47:28 PM
Jevon's Paradox says nothing about the size of the incremental demand though. Lighting is a great example. The US went from spending 15% of our electricity on lighting to ~4%. LEDs are maybe 5x as efficient, so that would be 3% without any change in usage. So we did see maybe a 30% increase in consumption as a result of lower prices, but that was nowhere near large enough to offset the efficiency gain in terms of overall consumption. Las Vegas may have, but that is a very small part of overall usage.I anticipate we will see something similar with intelligence. There is probably headroom to consume 100x as much intelligence in R&D. But that isn't most of the economy. Will run of the mill service jobs increase their use of intelligence by enough to offset the effect of cheaper prices? I think that's the real question.
by conjecTech
8/21/2026 at 4:20:05 PM
Intelligence is a lever, not a fluid. Power depends on how much force it can apply to specific points, not how much exists in general.True high-intelligence outputs (Maxwell's equations, the Fourier Transform, quantum theory) are fundamentally transformative in ways that mid-high-competence (starting a generic B2B SaaS, making another CRUD app) aren't.
Which is why we've assumed we're already pretty far down the path to AI, but we really aren't. Solving random Erdős problems isn't the same as opening up a completely new kind of math/science with game changing practical applications.
I don't think you can get to that level with more compute and more tokens. I think it's going to take new higher level knowledge representations and new kinds of training to get there.
And the token count and compute may turn out to be lower than what we're using now.
by TheOtherHobbes
8/21/2026 at 3:23:57 PM
Definitely not going to argue against the Jevons paradox in general, it is observed in various cases.The lightbulb thing seems different though? Or at least it is a specific subset. Lights in Las Vegas are sort of an advertisement, right? In the sense that having the brightest or most interesting (or whatever) lights draw attention to your show, casino, hotel, whatever. It’s kind of a zero sum game in that the different shops are competing for the finite attention of a more-or-less set number of tourist. I think part of the Jevons paradox is that society generally finds more useful applications of the newly cheap thing. If the thing’s only purpose is to compete better in a competition with a set prize (all of the tourists’ money), that’s constrained in some way.
Intelligence is weird though. I guess we could eventually hit the point where, I dunno, maybe there’s some information theoretic bound where we process all of our signals as cleverly as possible and aren’t bound by intelligence anymore. Obviously we’re nowhere near that. It would be a very alien environment.
by bee_rider
8/21/2026 at 3:26:45 PM
> I think the same will happen with tokens. As the cost of tokens comes down, these models will just consume more tokens.That sounds a race to the bottom for AI companies profits.
I do not think that LEDs are high profit margin items.
by Frieren
8/21/2026 at 3:28:30 PM
Tokens for sure because we still waiting for agents talking to agents as a default. Like your agent team and very long or 24/7 running agents.But we never scaled intelligence like this. The industrieal revolution created for the people at that time quite a huge issue / it was disruptive.
What will hapen to us though?
by Flamkuchlo
8/21/2026 at 3:05:42 PM
Sounds like a variation on the induced demand principle: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Induced_demandRelated:
- Parkinson's law: "Work expands to fill the available time." https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Parkinson%27s_Law
- Lewis–Mogridge position: "Traffic expands to meet the available road space." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lewis%E2%80%93Mogridge_positio...
And I pretty much just plain agree, this is exactly what will happen.
I don't think there's anything wrong with it (in isolation) either, though I do already find myself pointing out that we're misusing LLMs at work sometimes (most notably, a recent mini project could have been a jinja template - and it did become one thanks to me pushing back on this). Abundance is one thing, waste and misuse is another.
by perching_aix
8/21/2026 at 3:42:11 PM
Also Jevon's Paradox: the more efficient a system becomes, the more it gets used, making it use more resources rather than less.by bena
8/21/2026 at 3:10:39 PM
Turns out Grey Goo was just thermal pasteby AndrewKemendo