I had a vibe-coding phase that I think largely followed the popular arc and timeline from optimism through to disappointment.

Definitely felt some burnout or dumbness after it, trying to get back into thinking for myself and actually writing code.

I think it's like gambling, you're sort of chasing an ideal result that feels close but never happens. That's where the exhaustion comes from imo, much more than if you were switching from manager to IC which I don't find tiring. I think its more a dopamine withdrawal than context switching.

Thanks! I do have ublock origin and can typically get rid of these if I need to. It's just the frustration of going to websites that ostensibly want me to read something that see fit to destroy my focus as soon as I try to start.

As soon as some widget in the corner of a site wiggles to get my attention, I leave. If you/they want people to actually read their articles they shouldn't try to distract readers as soon as they start.

Even though I think most people know this deep down, I still don't think we actively realize how optimized LLMs are towards sounding good. It's the ultra processed food version of information consumption. People are super lazy (economical if you like) and rlhf et al have optimized LLM output to being easy to digest.

Consequence is you get a bunch of output that looks really good as long as you don't think about it (and they actively promotes not thinking about it) that you don't really understand, and that if you did dig into you'd realize is empty fluff or actively wrong.

It's worse than not learning, it's actively generating unthinking but palatable garbage that's the opposite of learning.