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Longer context does not make LLMs reliably recover sequential rules

huggingface.co by Jerry Wang et al. Editor score 7/10

Controlled Rock–Paper–Scissors and n-gram experiments find that longer context does not improve strategy identification, recognition does not guarantee faithful simulation, and higher-order dependencies impair rule recovery. These results caution against treating behavioral imitation as evidence that a model learned the underlying process.

What

- A controlled study tests whether LLMs recover sequential rules in Rock–Paper–Scissors and stochastic n-gram tasks.

Method

- Longer context did not improve identification; correct recognition did not ensure faithful simulation, and higher-order dependencies worsened rule recovery.

Why it matters

- Behavioral simulations can look faithful while using incorrect generative mechanisms, a risk when building LLM agents or simulators.

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