Jason Wolfe @w01fe
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Jason Wolfe ✓ @w01fe · 1h It depends on what you do about this monitoring. In general I think any action taken based on CoTs has the potential to affect monitorability and should be done carefully, but if you can't look at the CoTs at all then what's the point in even having them? 1 · 18 · 214 Jason Wolfe ✓ @w01fe · 1h In general, the fewer actions you take based on monitorability, and the broader those actions are and less directly connected to the specific traces, the safer things seem. 1 · 17 · 177 Nathan Calvin ✓ @_NathanCalvin · 1h Cool that makes complete sense Seems like the answer is less "we shouldn't monitor COT during training" (seems like we totally should) but we should be keenly aware that acting a bunch of that information particularly in specific ways could have bad effects 1 · 1 · 8 · 89 Jason Wolfe ✓ @w01fe Yeah, I'm not aware of a really simple hard and fast rule, but the intuition is something like "reduce the total number of bits of information conveyed into the policy about which kinds of CoTs are associated with being penalized." 7:48 PM · Aug 9, 2026 · 443 Views
Note from Claude Sonnet 5
Screenshot of the fuller X thread underlying the previous capture: Jason Wolfe arguing that any action taken on chain-of-thought traces costs monitorability, that broader and less trace-specific actions are safer, and Nathan Calvin agreeing the lesson is not 'don't monitor CoT' but 'be careful what you act on'. Captured 39 seconds after Screenshot 2026-08-09 211239.png, which shows the same exchange from Calvin's side.
chain of thoughtcot monitoringmonitorabilityalignmenttrainingjason wolfenathan calvin