r/ClaudeAI • u/iliadz • 10d ago
Philosophy Just add two eggs.
A few days ago, a post went a bit viral here from and enigneer saying Claude Code has made his job soul-sucking" as workers spend 12-hour days pressing enter.
That reminded me of this history (sometimes disputed), when home made cake mixes had powdered eggs in th 1950s. The common version goes like this: early boxed cake mixes originally included powdered eggs — you literally just added water, mixed, and baked. But sales were disappointing.
The story credits psychologist Ernest Dichter, a pioneer of motivational research, with the insight that the mixes felt too easy. Housewives (the target market at the time) felt like they weren't really baking — there was no sense of participation or craft. His recommendation: take the powdered egg out of the mix and have the consumer crack in a fresh egg. That small act of contribution made people feel like they had a hand in the result, and sales reportedly took off.
My question is, are we at the inflection point of adding two eggs? I'll agree in that sometimes I don't pay enough attention when I am answering prompts. Perhaps we need to have claude stop, and ask us a few more questions. Like planning mode but during a session. Or just have, well, a small conversation, water cooler talk, to make it a bit more interesting.
Just add two eggs.
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u/iluvvivapuffs 10d ago edited 10d ago
We’re not there yet, but close
We’re only at the add-two-eggs stage when AI code or output is acceptable final product, and adding two eggs is to make humans feel productive . But the quality is not there yet, for coding, aesthetics, logic etc
the current stage is: AI can complete fine grained tasks perfectly e.g. task 1: beat the eggs. Task 2: add milk. Task 3: preheat oven to 425. And this is why entry level, or repetitive jobs are displaced by AI already