'You Can Feel the Gradient Slopes': Dev Contrasts Benchmaxxed RL Models vs General Ones
theteknosaur · x · 2026-11-02
The author watched two models tackle identical tasks: one was clearly RL-tuned into benchmaxxing — "you can feel the gradient slopes in its outputs," every task dragged toward whatever shape the reward model preferred, leaving "benchmark scar tissue." The other pulls weights from whatever domain is relevant and lets general intelligence flow through, with no benchmark scarring. Same task, totally different output texture. A pointed community observation on the side effects of RL post-training and reward-model overfitting.
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