Reinforcement learning (RL) is credited with teaching reasoning models to write {wait} before reconsidering a step, yet large RL accuracy gains do not require the word. This view can confuse what RL discovers with what a model inherits from its training data. We trace the word through open models' t
A Quadratic Lens on Muon's Polar Update: Benefits, Pitfalls, and the Role of Newton-Schulz