about
(How) Do reasoning models reason? (arxiv.org)
3 points by YeGoblynQueenne on May 6, 2025 | hide | past | pdf | discuss on HN

In plain words: Language models often write extra text before the answer, and people call it "thinking," as if the model reasons like a human. That label is misleading: it distorts how we understand and use these models and encourages shaky research.

Abstract · Position: Stop Anthropomorphizing Intermediate Tokens as Reasoning/Thinking Traces!

Intermediate token generation (ITG), where a model produces output before the solution, has become a standard method to improve the performance of language models on reasoning tasks. These intermediate tokens have been called \say{reasoning traces} or even \say{thinking traces} -- implicitly anthropomorphizing the traces, and implying that these traces resemble steps a human might take when solving a challenging problem, and as such can provide an interpretable window into the operation of the model's thinking process to the end user. In this position paper, we present evidence that this anthropomorphization isn't a harmless metaphor, and instead is quite dangerous -- it confuses the nature of these models and how to use them effectively, and leads to questionable research. We call on the community to avoid such anthropomorphization of intermediate tokens.

Subbarao Kambhampati, Karthik Valmeekam, Siddhant Bhambri, Vardhan Palod, Lucas Saldyt, Kaya Stechly, Soumya Rani Samineni, Durgesh Kalwar, Upasana Biswas
arXiv:2504.09762 · cs.AI · submitted Apr 14, 2025 · updated Jun 9, 2026
abstract · pdf · html · Appears in ICML 2026. [This is a fork of v1. This fork, while overlapping with v1 in background section, differs both in the overall focus as well as the specific argument against anthropomorphization of reasoning traces]

add comment on HN
Also discussed: Aug 2026 (316 points, 281 comments) · Jun 2026 (4 points, 0 comments) · Jun 2025 (1 point, 0 comments) · Apr 2025 (2 points, 0 comments)