Comment by gwd

Actually that thread has an interesting theory:

"... o-series models are often prompted with previous messages without having access to the relevant reasoning. When asked questions that rely on their internal reasoning for previous steps, they must then come up with a plausible explanation for their behavior."

The fact is that humans do this all the time too -- their subconscious prompts them to do something, which they then do without reflecting or analyzing what their motivation might be. When challenged on it, they come up with a rationalization, not an actual reflected explanation.

The movie "Memento" is basically about how humans do this -- use faulty memories to rationalize stories for ourselves. At some point, a secondary character asks the main character, "And this fancy suit you're wearing, this car, where did they come from?" The main character (who is unable to form any long term memory) says, "I'm an insurance agent; my wife had insurance and I used the money from the payout to buy them." To which the secondary character says, "An in your grief, you went out and bought a Jaguar."

Not to give any spoilers, but that's not where the Jaguar came from, and the secondary character knows that.