What Makes Qwen 3 Max Thinking So Weird?

Quick Overview

Qwen3-Max's thinking behavior appears weird because it successfully handles complex reasoning tasks like the Trolley Problem and the River Crossing Puzzle using its tool-calling capabilities, but it fails on simpler coding tasks like generating functional HTML/JavaScript for bouncing balls, indicating a disconnect between its advanced logical reasoning and its practical implementation skills in certain domains.

Key Points: Qwen3-Max successfully reasoned through the complex Trolley Problem by correctly identifying the critical detail that the five people were already dead, leading to the conclusion that diverting the trolley was ethically permissible. The model demonstrated strong reasoning by providing a correct, step-by-step solution for the classic Farmer, Wolf, Goat, and Cabbage River Crossing Puzzle. Qwen3-Max failed to generate working code for a complex HTML/JavaScript simulation of 20 bouncing balls inside a spinning heptagon, even after multiple attempts and tool use. The model struggled with the bouncing balls prompt, producing code that either resulted in errors or only a blank screen, suggesting limitations in its practical coding/tool execution capabilities. The reasoning version of Qwen3-Max showed superior performance in abstract logical tasks compared to the non-reasoning version on benchmarks like AME25 and HMMT. The video contrasted Qwen3-Max's success in abstract reasoning with its failure in generating functional, complex creative code, highlighting an apparent asymmetry in its capabilities. The model exhibited poor performance in coding tasks even when using tool-calling features, suggesting that the 'Thinking' feature does not universally translate to better practical output across all domains.

Context: The video explores the capabilities of Qwen3-Max, a large language model, focusing specifically on its 'Thinking' feature, which enables multi-step reasoning, often utilizing external tools like web search. The presenter tests this reasoning ability first with classic ethical dilemmas (Trolley Problem) and logic puzzles (River Crossing Puzzle), where the model excels, before moving on to a complex coding challenge involving physics simulation in HTML/JavaScript.