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A Key-Position Confound in no-cot-bench (and implications for interpreting looped transformers).

LessWrongAnalysis or commentary·
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A LessWrong post identifies a confound in no-cot-bench related to the positioning of the prompt's key, and says correcting for it reduces GPT-6.1 Sol's no-cot reasoning depth by 16%.

Why it matters: The post states the effect likely grows as dependent depth increases, which it says matters for interpreting looped transformers.

Written by AI from LessWrong's published text.

Source

“TL;DR : We identify a confound in no-cot-bench related to the positioning of the prompt's "key." Correcting for this decreases GPT-6.1 Sol's no-cot reasoning depth by 16%, with the effect likely growing as dependent depth increases.”
LessWrong, 02 Oct 2026, 14:39.

Interpretation or community commentary rather than straight reporting.

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