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Reading LLM chain of thought makes me more rational

by Michael Steele
18th Nov 2025
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I am realizing that I never fully learned how to think. 

School overall taught me outcomes. As long as I arrive at a correct answer, I did good. The parts of school that teach me explicitly how to think are the parts of school that taught me best. Phonics for reading. And early mathematics education. Both taught me mental algorithms to follow. I learned a chain of thought algorithm to follow both for reading and for arithmetic.

Most books and movies are the same thing. There are a few books I have read like "Crime and Punishment" that are written from the perspective of people's inner monologues. In "Crime and Punishment" you can see inside his head. You can see his emotions, his chain of thought, his logical fallacies.

Many humans have a non-verbal inner monologue and therefore have no way of conveying their chain of thought to someone else. I think most people are "rolling their own" chain of thought. Cultural differences between countries often might come down to the chain of thought that the average person in different countries tend to follow.

But reading the chain of thought of LLMs like ChatGPT whenever I ask them questions has been quite instructive. It seems to have a positive impact on me. I will keep doing it.