I reported a similar case of mine several days ago [0]. I was able to achieve better quality than Claude Code's 624 lines of spaghetti code in 334 lines of well-designed code. In a previous case, I rewrote ~400-line LLM generated code in 130 lines.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47272913

> change the prompt in a way that would produce code similar to what you've achieved manually.

The problem is that I don't know what I'll achieve manually before attempting the task.

Got it. Looks like we're on the same page. Everyone makes a subjective call.

> we now think it's +9% - +38%

If you are referring to the following quote [0], you are off by a sign:

> we now estimate a speedup of -18% with a confidence interval between -38% and +9%.

[0] https://metr.org/blog/2026-02-24-uplift-update/

I don't get the point. What does objectivity have to do with the value of x?

Your example seems to validate my point of view: warmongers disguise their subjectivity by basing their actions on “objective” models.