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robterrell • yesterday at 10:59 PM • 5 replies • view on HN

> There was a tendency toward bureaucracy. Four agents spent 11 minutes appointing > a "sole fertilizer operator" for a single piece of bone meal on a single wheat > block.

Feels like a scene from Douglas Adams' B Ark.


Replies

kergonath • yesterday at 11:09 PM

Exactly what I was thinking reading through this. This is amazing and also frightening and hilarious. It’s like a deformed version of how normal groups of humans would operate. Very rules and process-oriented humans. I found the no-blame inquiry into chicken tossing that resulted in what is effectively written law particularly striking, and adorable, and depressing. And cute.

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mplappert • today at 7:52 AM

This is exactly and 100% my experience with these agents: They drown themselves in process and insane levels of bureaucracy surprisingly quickly.

A couple months ago we had an experiment where we had an agent run a small business [1] for other agents and exactly the same happened: Crazy ledgers, endless analysis, and way too much attention to inconsequential decisions.

At one point our agent wrote elaborate date linters because it had a minor time mix-up.

[1]: https://dfdxlabs.com/research/2026/hans-kraemer

Rapzid • today at 1:08 AM

Getting hung up on pointless stuff seems common with agents in general.

cowlevel • today at 12:07 AM

I was thinking a nomic. Or Stack Overflow.

rcxdude • today at 12:53 AM

It does seem to be a commonly reported theme of multi-agent setups.