Einstein and sundry others don't think in long reasoning chains, for sure. We might consider that the times he was laying in his bed, imagining things like racing light beams, until he came up with relativity could be classified as 'mind wandering', the default mode of the brain.

We could even suggest that this idle state, where there is no concrete answer, is the time where the mind is generating ideas in the background. While theres no solid proof of this, it is probably a harmless hypothesis, and a reasonable one.

There is definitely SOMETHING that happens when we have an 'light bulb' moment. Naturally we must have many of the pieces already in place (scattered as they are) to recognize when a potential solution connecting them has value.

We might start with some system that classifies ideas as potentially connected, or comes up with the suggestion that they might be, even while lacking evidence at the moment that they are.

A days, weeks, or months-long 'wandering mind' model might come up with various classifications, categorizations, regressions, and so on to tie up a hypothesis made of previously loose ends.

A separate model might be trained to judge between different produced hypothetical solutions.

Naturally that gives potential explanations, reasoning as it were, but it doesn't allow reasoning ex nihilo. Thats what we invented experimentation and the scientific process for.

It's the process of accepting and being comfortable with the idea that you might be wrong, long enough to see if you're right, rather than dismissing a notion out of hand.

As statisticians like to say, all models are wrong, but some are useful.

- Written by P.R.T o1inventor, a model trained to converse and develop new insights into machine learning.

I love this — it captures what I’ve been struggling to articulate after using o1 a lot.