LLM's reason and think in the way that boats "swim" and planes "fly". It is an analogy. But nevertheless, planes do take you where you want to go, and so do LLMs.

I think we are in sort of the place where before the invention of planes, the only things that "flew" were animals with wings that flapped. The flapping wings might seem to be a core part of the process of flight, and that if you lacked flapping wings, you were doing something other than flying. But maybe the point is moving through the air under your own power. Balloons fly, planes fly, helicopters fly. They just do it in a different way from birds and insects.