Decision-only training teaches shortcuts that skip belief formation

JessicaHullman · x · 2026-10-23

Thread follow-up: decision-only training substantially reduces total regret with minimal belief improvement, suggesting models learn shortcuts that skip belief formation; forcing the LLM to state beliefs first makes most of the gain disappear. Charts across synthetic, weather, and clinical domains support the finding.

Related event: Northwestern paper decomposes LLM decision failures into belief loss and optimization residual(10 posts)→

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