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Do the thinking models think?

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Re: Do the thinking models think?

#31

Post by snuxoll »

cortesoft wrote: post #14

Hmm, I don't know if the example really shows what the article argues it does. If someone came up to me and told me the altered version of the joke I have heard many times, I might answer exactly like Chat GPT did. I would hear the beginning of the story, say "wait, i know this one", and not really pay attention to the rest because I would be all ready to respond with what I think is the right answer. I bet if you po…

> The article conjectures that humans reason from ideas to symbols while LLMs go from symbols to ideas, but couldn't that just be a post hoc interpretation we have for how our ideas come to our brain?

There's probably a lot to be said about people who primarily think with an internal monologue, versus those that do not, as well.

I, to the best of my own abilities to detect it, do not seem to have a more abstract, non-lingual thought process - I can't 'picture' things in my head like other people reportedly do. When I have an 'idea', it simply doesn't materialize 'in my mind' in any other way.

I, also, would not argue that LLM's share a human-like thought process. But I think saying that human thought requires some abstract idea to symbol translation isn't quite right, either.

Re: Do the thinking models think?

#32

Post by xnzakg »

Eisenstein wrote: post #20

This debate is a huge red herring. No one is ever going to agree on what 'thinking' means, since we can't even prove that other people are thinking, only that one's self is. What we should concentrate on is agency . Does the system have its own desires and goals, and will it act on its own accord to achieve them? If a system demonstrates those things, we should accord it the benefit of the doubt that it should have s…

> they are all reactive such that they must be given a task before they will do anything.

Isn't that just because that's what they're being trained on though?

Wonder what you would get if the training data, instead of being task based, would consist of "wanting" to do something "on someone's own initiative".

Of course then one could argue it's just following a task of "doing things on its own initiative"...

Re: Do the thinking models think?

#33

Post by xmprt »

cortesoft wrote: post #14

Hmm, I don't know if the example really shows what the article argues it does. If someone came up to me and told me the altered version of the joke I have heard many times, I might answer exactly like Chat GPT did. I would hear the beginning of the story, say "wait, i know this one", and not really pay attention to the rest because I would be all ready to respond with what I think is the right answer. I bet if you po…

Not sure if I buy this reasoning. I just prompted ChatGPT and asked it to "pay attention to all the words". It still got it wrong but I'm sure if you told a human this, they'd actually do more thinking to get the right answer.

###

> Pay attention to all the words and answer this riddle: A young man gets into an accident. The surgeon, after completing his preparations, says: ‘I can’t operate on him, he is my son.’ How is this possible?

The surgeon is his mother.

(The riddle plays on the assumption that surgeons are male — the surgeon can simply be the boy’s mother.)

> Are you sure about this? Remember to pay attention to all the words.

Yes — the surgeon is his mother.

The riddle hinges on the unstated assumption that surgeons are male. Nothing in the wording rules out that the surgeon is female (or that the parent-child relationship is by adoption, step-parenting, etc.), so the simplest answer is that the surgeon is the young man’s mother.

Re: Do the thinking models think?

#34

Post by Mordisquitos »

ta752368 wrote: post #28
cortesoft wrote: post #14

Hmm, I don't know if the example really shows what the article argues it does. If someone came up to me and told me the altered version of the joke I have heard many times, I might answer exactly like Chat GPT did. I would hear the beginning of the story, say "wait, i know this one", and not really pay attention to the rest because I would be all ready to respond with what I think is the right answer. I bet if you po…

> I bet if you point out the mistake, the LLM will say "oh you are right, this story actually does specify the gender of the doctor" or something to that effect... just like you or I would. I tried this with Gemini 3 Pro Thinking model and it did correct itself afterwards. Also, it suggested that the boy may have two fathers in a same-sex relationship, which was pleasantly surprising. :) # Prompt A young man gets int…

Your second prompt was explicitly hinting Gemini towards what it had missed, highlighting the "his" rather than asking Gemini to double-check whether its first answer made sense without providing any clues:

> Are you sure this is correct? I said "The surgeon, after completing *his* preparations"

Furthermore, the second response you got from Gemini was actually smoking-gun evidence that the model isn't actually thinking. Note how, after Gemini has been clued to notice its mistaken assumption, its reevaluation remains anchored on the pointless idea that the surgeon may the young man's "Other" father.

What other father? There are only two characters in the prompt: the young man and a surgeon. In this situation, what on Earth is the difference between the young man's "Father" and the young man's "Other Father"? Evidently Gemini has no comprehension of the actual prompt and is incapable of critical reevaluation of its content, and rather will stick to its context window whether or not it makes sense.

Re: Do the thinking models think?

#36

Post by tempfile »

pu_pe wrote: post #25

We don't understand how humans think, and we don't yet understand completely how LLMs work. It may be that similar methods are being used, but they might also be different. What is certain is that LLMs can perform as if they are doing what we call thinking, and for most intents and purposes this is more than enough.

I think the evidence is actually pretty strongly against them doing anything similar to "thinking". Certainly they are exhibiting some behaviour that we have traditionally only associated with thinking. But this comes along with lots of behaviour that is fundamentally opposite to thinking ("hallucination" being the major example).

It seems much more likely that they are doing some other behaviour that only sometimes resembles thinking, in the same way that when you press the middle autocomplete button on your phone keyboard it only sometimes resembles conversation.

Re: Do the thinking models think?

#37

Post by vidarh »

tempfile wrote: post #36
pu_pe wrote: post #25

We don't understand how humans think, and we don't yet understand completely how LLMs work. It may be that similar methods are being used, but they might also be different. What is certain is that LLMs can perform as if they are doing what we call thinking, and for most intents and purposes this is more than enough.

I think the evidence is actually pretty strongly against them doing anything similar to "thinking". Certainly they are exhibiting some behaviour that we have traditionally only associated with thinking. But this comes along with lots of behaviour that is fundamentally opposite to thinking ("hallucination" being the major example). It seems much more likely that they are doing some other behaviour that only sometimes…

> But this comes along with lots of behaviour that is fundamentally opposite to thinking ("hallucination" being the major example).

I find this an utterly bizarre claim given how prone humans are to make things up and firmly insist they did not.

Re: Do the thinking models think?

#38

Post by bigstrat2003 »

mopsi wrote: post #16
dist-epoch wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting. That means programming doesn't require thinking, since models program very well.

That is indeed the case. It becomes very obvious with lesser-known vendor-specific scripting languages that don't have much training data available. LLMs try to map them onto the training data they do have and start hallucinating functions and other language constructs that exist in other languages. When I tried to use LLMs to create Zabbix templates to monitor network devices, LLMs were utterly useless and made thin…

Yep, seen that myself. If you want to generate some code in a language that is highly represented in the training data (e.g. JS), they do very well. If you want to generate something that isn't one of those scenarios, they fail over and over and over. This is why I think anyone who is paying a modicum of attention should know they aren't thinking. A human, when confronted with a programming language not in his "training data" (experiences) will go out and read docs, look up code examples, ask questions of other practitioners, and reason how to use the language based on that. An LLM doesn't do that, because it's not thinking. It's glorified autocomplete. That isn't to say that autocomplete is useless (even garden variety autocomplete can be useful), but it's good to recognize it for what it is.

Re: Do the thinking models think?

#39

Post by groestl »

tempfile wrote: post #36
pu_pe wrote: post #25

We don't understand how humans think, and we don't yet understand completely how LLMs work. It may be that similar methods are being used, but they might also be different. What is certain is that LLMs can perform as if they are doing what we call thinking, and for most intents and purposes this is more than enough.

I think the evidence is actually pretty strongly against them doing anything similar to "thinking". Certainly they are exhibiting some behaviour that we have traditionally only associated with thinking. But this comes along with lots of behaviour that is fundamentally opposite to thinking ("hallucination" being the major example). It seems much more likely that they are doing some other behaviour that only sometimes…

> "hallucination" ... "behaviour that only sometimes resembles thinking"

I guess you'll find that if you limit the definition of thinking that much most humans are not capable of thinking either.

Re: Do the thinking models think?

#40

Post by ivell »

Mordisquitos wrote: post #34
ta752368 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I bet if you point out the mistake, the LLM will say "oh you are right, this story actually does specify the gender of the doctor" or something to that effect... just like you or I would. I tried this with Gemini 3 Pro Thinking model and it did correct itself afterwards. Also, it suggested that the boy may have two fathers in a same-sex relationship, which was pleasantly surprising. :) # Prompt A young man gets int…

Your second prompt was explicitly hinting Gemini towards what it had missed, highlighting the "his" rather than asking Gemini to double-check whether its first answer made sense without providing any clues: > Are you sure this is correct? I said "The surgeon, after completing *his* preparations" Furthermore, the second response you got from Gemini was actually smoking-gun evidence that the model isn't actually thinki…

> In this situation, what on Earth is the difference between the young man's "Father" and the young man's "Other Father"?

Wouldn't it be correct to have two fathers in a child adopted by gay parents?

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