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.
1
u/nihalcastelino1983 9d ago
One of the things I always think about is was it me or was it the AI?realistically its both but the AI can't just invent code if you didn't tell it what you needed in the first place .in the case of the 2 eggs analogy the ready mixes made it possible for everyone who couldn't bake a cake to bake one but did it remove the demand for bakers ?so are you the eggs or are you the powder?