It's not strictly compute, because this has noticeably improved in open-weight models too, such as Gemma and Qwen. I suspect they noticed this issue and adjusted their training to be better about it over time.
The model wasted over half the token budget, each time, on internal debates over the current date.
When generating a World Cup summary, for example, it refused to believe qualification rounds were over and refused to even call the web searching tool to collect the data.
I injected the current datetime at the very beginning of the system prompt, but Gemma refused to believe it!
The m-effer insisted the timestamp was fake and hypothesized it was being evaluated in a synthetic lab test with simulated future dates!
No amount of system prompting could convince it to trust the clock.
That was the most frustrating and bizarre "bug" I ever faced!
I've noticed Qwen3.6 struggles a bit with today/date based logic.
Only after some cajolling it finally went to check the history I asked it to (I had been testing KoboldCPP's web search).