What does yes $(yes yes) do

yes can be used to send an affirmative (or negative; e.g. yes n) response to any command that would otherwise request one, thereby causing the command to run non-interactively.

The yes command in conjunction with the head command can be used to generate large volume files for means of testing.

It can also be used to test how well a system handles high loads, as using yes results in 100% processor usage, for systems with a single processor (for a multiprocessor system, a process must be run for each processor). This, for example, can be useful for investigating whether a system's cooling system will be effective when the processor is running at 100%.

In 2006, the yes command received publicity for being a means to test whether or not a user's MacBook is affected by the Intermittent Shutdown Syndrome. By running the yes command twice via Terminal under Mac OS X, users were able to max out their computer's CPU, and thus see if the failure was heat related

via wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yes_(Unix)

It's a performance thing; instead of searching the whole path for the binary every time it is called, it's put into a hash table for quicker lookup. So any binary that's already in this hash table, is hashed. If you move binaries around when they're already hashed, it will still try to call them in their old location.

See also help hash, or man bash and search for hash under builtin commands there.