I kinda agree with you but I can also see why it isn't that far from "reasoning" in the sense humans do it.
To wit, if I am doing a high school geometry proof, I come up with a sequence of steps. If the proof is correct, each step follows logically from the one before it.
However, when I go from step 2 to step 3, there are multiple options for step-3 I could have chose. Is it so different from a "most-likely-prediction" an LLM makes? I suppose the difference is humans can filter out logically-incorrect steps, or prune chains-of-steps that won't lead to the actual theorem quicker. But an LLM predictor coupled with a verifier doesn't feel that different from it.
To wit, if I am doing a high school geometry proof, I come up with a sequence of steps. If the proof is correct, each step follows logically from the one before it.
However, when I go from step 2 to step 3, there are multiple options for step-3 I could have chose. Is it so different from a "most-likely-prediction" an LLM makes? I suppose the difference is humans can filter out logically-incorrect steps, or prune chains-of-steps that won't lead to the actual theorem quicker. But an LLM predictor coupled with a verifier doesn't feel that different from it.