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Humans, like LLMs, have a context window too.

Fun fact: humans are basically the same. Harder problems demand higher mental capacity. When you can't hold everything in your head at once, you can't consider every what-if and, in turn, won't be able to preempt would-be issues. Multi-faceted tasks also require clear focus to doggedly pursue the problem that needs to be solved, as distractions will deplete one's cognitive ability.

What usually happens when we get too much context for the problem at hand is that we start to lose track of details, we get distracted, maybe even irritable. The task and the time it takes to do it balloon. We might even forgot why we start down this path in the first place.

As I was reading Justin’s example of the mental task stack he ended up down, I thought it sounded farfetched. “No one is going to do all these unnecessary things when they are just trying to add a route.” But then I remembered ALL the times that I get six steps removed from what I set out to do because of a series of unexpected mishaps and several “I can’t help myself”s.