Abhinav Kochar

Mike Farmer, Abhinav Kochar, Yugyung Lee

Large language models (LLMs) that iteratively revise their outputs through mechanisms such as chain-of-thought reasoning, self-reflection, or multi-agent debate lack principled guarantees regarding the stability of their probability updates. We identify a consistent multiplicative scaling law that governs how instruction-tuned LLMs revise probability assignments over candidate answers, expressed as a belief revision exponent that controls how prior beliefs and verification evidence are combined during updates. We show theoretically that values of the exponent below one are necessary and sufficient for asymptotic stability under repeated revision. Empirical evaluation across 4,975 problems spanning graduate-level benchmarks (GPQA Diamond, TheoremQA, MMLU-Pro, and ARC-Challenge) and multiple model families (GPT-5.2 and Claude Sonnet 4) reveals near-Bayesian update behavior, with models operating slightly above the stability boundary in single-step revisions. However, multi-step experiments demonstrate that the exponent decreases over successive revisions, producing contractive long-run dynamics consistent with theoretical stability predictions. Token-level validation using Llama-3.3-70B further confirms similar behavior across both log-probability measurements and self-reported confidence elicitation. Analysis of update components exposes architecture-specific trust-ratio patterns, with GPT-5.2 showing balanced weighting between prior and evidence, while Claude modestly favors new evidence. This work characterizes observable inference-time update behavior rather than internal Bayesian reasoning, and introduces the α-law as a principled diagnostic for monitoring update stability and reasoning quality in LLM inference systems.

Michael Farmer, Abhinav Kochar, Yugyung Lee

We show that Fisher-regularized Wasserstein gradient flows exhibit a previously unrecognized interference mechanism in their dissipation identity: a cross-dissipation term whose sign becomes positive when the state width falls below a critical scale. In this regime the geometric Fisher channel transiently opposes descent of the baseline free-energy functional, producing what we term the Fisher Paradox. Restricting the flow to the Gaussian manifold yields an exact Riccati-type variance equation with a closed-form trajectory, exposing three dynamical regimes separated by two critical scales: sigma = 1 (cross-dissipation sign flip) and sigma = sqrt(epsilon) (Fisher takeover). The variance potential V(u) = u^2 - 2u - epsilon ln(u) contains a logarithmic centrifugal barrier that shifts the equilibrium attractor by Delta sigma approx epsilon/4. The interference persists for a duration t_cross ~ D_KL, linking the dissipation delay directly to the initial information distance. Finite-difference simulations on a 512-point grid confirm all analytical predictions to within 5.21 x 10^-4 mean relative error. Numerical experiments with bimodal and Laplace initial conditions confirm the effect persists beyond Gaussian closure, with direct implications for information-geometric dissipative dynamics.