/Tech3h ago

Gary Marcus disputes Dwarkesh Patel's claim that LLM chain-of-thought outputs demonstrate genuine reasoning

Interpretability research shows chain-of-thought can mask meaningless circuits.

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#17

Original post

Dwarkesh Patel@dwarkesh_sp#17inTech

Whatever AI sceptics say, LLMs really can reason. They're not just doing an imitation that looks like reasoning, it's the real deal.

But even though they are able to reason, sometimes they won't! If you ask an LLM a question it can't answer, sometimes it will just try to imitate reasoning without doing it.

The chain of thought looks basically indistinguishable from actual reasoning. But under the hood something very different is going on.

@TrentonBricken talked with me about what work on circuits inside LLMs has revealed:

12:01 PM · Jun 9, 2026 · 37.3K Views

/Tech3h ago

Gary Marcus disputes Dwarkesh Patel's claim that LLM chain-of-thought outputs demonstrate genuine reasoning

Interpretability research shows chain-of-thought can mask meaningless circuits.

202582520030.1K

#17

Original post

Dwarkesh Patel@dwarkesh_sp#17inTech

Whatever AI sceptics say, LLMs really can reason. They're not just doing an imitation that looks like reasoning, it's the real deal.

But even though they are able to reason, sometimes they won't! If you ask an LLM a question it can't answer, sometimes it will just try to imitate reasoning without doing it.

The chain of thought looks basically indistinguishable from actual reasoning. But under the hood something very different is going on.

@TrentonBricken talked with me about what work on circuits inside LLMs has revealed:

12:01 PM · Jun 9, 2026 · 37.3K Views

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Gary Marcus@GaryMarcus

what does this even mean, @dwarkesh_sp, “the real deal”? is it even a falsifiable conjecture? what’s the evidence?

and if you can agree that “If you ask an LLM a question it can't answer, sometimes it will just try to imitate reasoning without doing it”, why acknowledge the possibility of imitation when it gets wrong but not when it gets it right?

seems like a double standard?

Dwarkesh Patel@dwarkesh_sp

Whatever AI sceptics say, LLMs really can reason. They're not just doing an imitation that looks like reasoning, it's the real deal.

But even though they are able to reason, sometimes they won't! If you ask an LLM a question it can't answer, sometimes it will just try to imitate reasoning without doing it.

The chain of thought looks basically indistinguishable from actual reasoning. But under the hood something very different is going on.

@TrentonBricken talked with me about what work on circuits inside LLMs has revealed:

1h7.7K298

REPLIES6

Gary Marcus@GaryMarcus

what constitutes reasoning in AI is a critical debate. i hope that @dwarkesh_sp will respond.

Gary Marcus@GaryMarcus

what does this even mean, @dwarkesh_sp, “the real deal”? is it even a falsifiable conjecture? what’s the evidence?

seems like a double standard?

40m1.9K82

Gary Marcus@GaryMarcus

@dwarkesh_sp this seems muddy to me, as discussed here:

Gary Marcus@GaryMarcus

what does this even mean, @dwarkesh_sp, “the real deal”? is it even a falsifiable conjecture? what’s the evidence?

seems like a double standard?

1h2K91