Painting into a corner

Because the model can only move forward, it can talk itself into a dead end.

Picture it starting an answer with a confident opening clause, the kind that promises a clean list of three reasons. Each word it commits narrows what can sensibly come next. By the time it has set up that promise, it has boxed itself in. If it turns out there are really only two good reasons, the model cannot go back and rewrite the opening. The opening is already on the page, part of the context. So it presses on and invents a wobbly third reason to fit the shape it committed to.

This is the same trap as painting a floor and backing yourself into the far corner. Every brushstroke was reasonable on its own. It is the no-going-back rule that turns a series of reasonable steps into a place you are stuck.

It is worth seeing clearly, because it dissolves a common misreading. When a model writes something that drifts or contradicts an earlier line, it usually is not confused in the way a person would be. It made a locally sensible choice early, and then had to live with it. There was never a draft to fix. There was only the next word, and the next, each one final the moment it landed.