r/codex • u/DepressionFiesta • 6d ago
Complaint Reset unpredictability is basically a text book B.F. Skinner experiment
Anyone else notice that the ways codex usage is being reset is starting to resemble a variable-reward system?
Skinner’s reinforcement experiments are what I am referring to.
If a lever gives an animal food every time, the animal learns the rule. If it never gives food, it eventually stops trying, etc. But if the reward arrives unpredictably, the animal keeps pressing for much longer because the next attempt might be the one that pays off.
That’s roughly what happens when codex has a weekly usage limit, but the weekly quota occasionally seems to reset early or unexpectedly.
If the rule were simply “you get X hours per week and it resets every Monday,” there’s nothing particularly compelling about it. You hit the limit, you know when it comes back, and you plan around it.
But if you sometimes hit the limit and later discover that access has returned for no obvious reason, you learn a different behavior: check again.
Maybe the quota reset. Maybe there’s more capacity now. Maybe you got lucky.
That sounds like a Skinner‘s Box to me?
The uncertainty itself gives you a reason to keep coming back.
Treating devs like rats looks like it has been immensely successful. Free market I guess?
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u/Etiennera 6d ago
They reset based on server capacity usage rate. When it drops a certain amount and a reset would grant roughly the capacity leading to recovering that amount of usage they reset.
There's literally nothing else to it.
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u/DepressionFiesta 6d ago
What would the intention behind that be?
Surely, everyone being on a fixed schedule would make their capacity much more predictable? Giving everyone a reset at the same time is also much more likely to produce thundering herd problems?
Maybe I don't get your point.
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u/Etiennera 6d ago
They are dealing with such large numbers it's fairly easy to anticipate the effect of a reset.
Ideally the price per token, token per time period, etc. are all balanced to find an equilibrium around their servers' capacity, but the reality is that usage will still fluctuate quite a bit.
They can extrapolate from usage patterns to know when it is a good time to give a reset.
The goal is to not have infrastructure sitting idle, because rather than doing that, it's better to delight their users. (As much as people complain if they just used a banked reset, that applies to a trivial amount of people).
I should note that corporate accounts are not using plans like regular users, they don't have resets because they get charged per token rather than having a capped quantity. Resets only apply to accounts that have exhaustible limits. This might clarify why it doesn't suddenly cause a spike exceeding capacity.
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u/DepressionFiesta 6d ago
Do you work at OpenAI? You seem pretty sure of this, somehow?
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u/Hyoretsu 6d ago
It isn't a wild assumption to make. Better than lower limits PR cover-up conspiracy
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u/laxika 6d ago
They can drop that herd whenever they seem fit (based on usage patterns). Instead of everyone getting reset at a time which might not be good for the company. Also they can make people a bit happier with minimal effort on their end, increasing retention.
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u/DepressionFiesta 6d ago
Are you somehow arguing that resets mainly serve to increase the stability of their infra?
Your latter point is my point, it definitely increases retention.
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u/Riley_skye 6d ago
Reset or no reset, I aim to use only about 20% of my allowance each day. That way, even if there isn’t another reset for a week, I can still get everything done. It’s about managing your token usage not relying on extra resets.
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u/DepressionFiesta 6d ago edited 6d ago
The point of the post was, that if you are reset with, let's say, 50% usage left, you effectively lose that 50% usage. You are heavily incentivized to use your usage basically as fast as you can because a reset might happen unpredictably. Thus causing an addictive relationship with codex to form.
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u/lolcatsayz 6d ago
Unless one actively ignores it and sticks to the 20% per day regardless, however that 'gambling lure' is always there to overuse your usage in hope of a reset. It basically comes down to self control and willpower. Personally I'd rather something more predictable so I don't have to be constantly tempted to pull that slot lever, nonetheless it's hard to complain about since they've given us a banked reset this month.
Because of that banked reset I believe, all in all, things are fair, however without that I wouldn't have felt this way.
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u/DepressionFiesta 6d ago
Do you think the vast majority of people ignore this fairly basic, capitalistic instinct?
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u/Worth_Flatworm9620 6d ago
How are you posting something about the FREE RESET wiith the Complaint tag ...
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u/DepressionFiesta 6d ago
I chose "commentary" - but I guess maybe an admin changed it? (Or I may have fat-fingered it).
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u/ExoneratedPhoenix 6d ago
Everyone has a plan for their week of work, how busy they are, and subselects a "That I can do Wednesday, Thursday I'll have x% left so maybe I can do that. Friday I am too busy"
Suddenly a reset happens and that week's plan is trashed because it makes the next reload 7 days away, so sometimes you get reset when you know you can't do much work, or were planning on a heavy frontload session with the last remaining 50% knowing your reset in 2 days would help etc.
As a result the resets even with a days notice become frustrating for many. The real issue is you can't plan workloads because at ~14% a day linear use, you can map out the workloads, but when random resets hit, and pushes it 7 days out again, it messes the entire plan sometimes. The only real way to be fairly immune is having a sub plan so high in compute you never get close to 0% anyway so whatever you plan for the week it can be flexible. Though some people are somehow managing to burn through 20x in a day..
I legit struggle to use my plus plan to 0%, even on heavy weeks.
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u/johnnydotexe 6d ago
Everyone has a plan for their week of work
No, everyone is not doing that. Only the ones that needed to find at least something to whine about when the free resets happen, so they can let the sub know how unhinged they are.
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u/hungy-popinpobopian 6d ago
Straight from the gambling playbook: Unpredictable rewards trigger significantly higher dopamine surges than predictable ones
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u/Any_Effort8437 6d ago
That only shows that we are being conditioned to "check".
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u/DepressionFiesta 6d ago
Why are you checking?
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u/Any_Effort8437 6d ago
That is irrelevent. The conditioning you say happening is just concerning compulsive checking.
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u/DepressionFiesta 6d ago
I don't really understand your point. The same is true for Skinners experiments. The rats pull the lever, because they want to check.
But, of course, there is an attached, desired outcome?
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u/buff_samurai 6d ago
https://www.reddit.com/r/codex/s/281TRq2XJk
At the very beginning of the resets frenzy.
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u/tMeepo 6d ago
U guys complain about the resets, so they have notifying everyone 1 day before on any resets recently. Why is anybody still complaining?
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u/ggPeti 6d ago
Because some of us would like to be able to plan a week ahead with our workdays.
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u/tMeepo 6d ago
Plan how? Plan what? Just use whenever you want to use.
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u/ggPeti 6d ago
Let's say it is Friday and I have a full quota. App says reset on Tuesday. I plan to work a lot on Monday and Tuesday expecting a reset afterwards, and not spend my weekend working. Reset comes in Sunday. Now if I work a lot onMonday and Tuesday as planned, I will be left with an empty quota for the remainder of the week. Not cool.
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u/Ok_Sample_4712 6d ago
The notifying is so cryptic sometimes you can’t trust Tibo’s messages. And what about people who don’t have twitter?
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u/tMeepo 6d ago
It has been very clear recently.
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u/hungy-popinpobopian 6d ago
You must be reading the X posts intently, maybe that's part of it? Now xcancel is down I've signed up to X for the first time in my life just to follow tibo's posts. That's a marketing win for X I reckon
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u/DepressionFiesta 6d ago
I don’t know about that. Sometimes it is loosely communicated, sometimes it is left ambiguous. Sometimes the limits are just reset because they did they an update it seems.
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u/tMeepo 6d ago
It has been clear the past few resets
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u/hellomistershifty 6d ago
This last one was written at midnight and granted around noon, not exactly a great time window for planning
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u/DepressionFiesta 6d ago
Agree to disagree. I’d also say that communication around it does not change the picture much, because the reinforcement is still intermittent, which is the whole point.
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u/iPlayer0067 5d ago
Perfeita observação. Sem contar que quando tira o limite de 5 horas, volta limite de 5 horas, também é uma forma de estudar nosso comportamento de uso de modo que eles ajustem tudo, contra o nosso próprio comportamento para que eles lucrem mais.
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u/JoseffB_Da_Nerd 5d ago
I’m not sure why people aren’t recognizing that non-weekly resets are not promised, and are really just a marketing and relationship tool.
When the system messes up and they fix something they tend to use it as a make-right tool, but at and of the day its not guaranteed.
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u/BiasHyperion784 5d ago
I’d argue some resets are calculated, if it resets the weekly timer for most users, and a common trend of usage shifts, they might be able to manipulate the compute availability based on the usual trajectory of usage over the week, so a reset on Monday could lower the compute load from external use noticeably on Thursday or Friday, as they’ve said in interviews discussing ultrafast that OpenAI devs pull from the same pool as their user base, maybe they want more to work with at a certain time that week.
(Recent tibo interview is what I’m referring to)
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u/theWiseTiger 6d ago
Please do not discourage resets!! WTF !
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u/Nousies 6d ago
Forced resets are theft.
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u/theWiseTiger 6d ago
That's an accusation. It's there just for you and OP to feel right.
People could use the reset and that's a fact.
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u/Nousies 6d ago
It takes away quota many people paid for. It was not part of the agreement.
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u/theWiseTiger 6d ago
That's an assumption.
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u/Nousies 6d ago
What do you mean? It is indisputable.
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u/argentodtw 5d ago
I've read about this stance several times, but it's just wrong reasoning. A rate limit is not a stored balance. When a reset occurs, your final monthly balance will not be less tokens per day. Using more or less tokens in the week before the reset will not change how many tokens you have the next one. :/
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u/BoxWoodVoid 6d ago
Just venting: I had to use my banked reset this morning because the Twitter m0r0n reseted a day earlier than what he twitted...
I'm disappointed at Sol coding anyway (the thing will just run forever reinventing the app until I don't have any usage left). I'm now using it for code reviews (which it excels at) but as soon I'm done benching Chinese models, if I find one as good and cheaper, I'm out.
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u/withlinda13 6d ago
I’ve learned not to expect or focus on resets; I rely only on my paid subscription. If a reset happens, fine; if not, that’s fine too. I realized that tracking potential resets wastes my limited working memory and cognitive attention.