arXiv paper studies how evidence ordering shapes streaming test-time compute
A new arXiv paper argues that reasoning policies for a fixed task and compute budget should change depending on the order in which evidence arrives. It frames this as an "information-slack dilemma": computing early leaves more time to finish but relies on incomplete evidence, while waiting yields better information at the cost of fewer remaining steps. The authors contend that depth and width alone do not capture this tradeoff, which streaming settings must account for.