As the saying goes, "if it works, it ain't stupid". Or phrased more sophisticatedly: not doing things which probably won't work is a good idea if you have a limited amount of thinking to do (which is usually the case for a human, who'll get exhausted chasing down unlikely leads). If you have no good leads and a task you absolutely need done and you are tireless, however, bashing your head against every wall you find becomes a good strategy.

Brute force is guaranteed to eventually find the most efficient possible solution (in an extremely inefficient manner, assuming you run it long enough)

I've never liked the concept either. Except the bugs that fuzzing has found has proven me wrong. This is just the next level of fuzzing.

The models tend to not be rewarded for not doing that.

> WHY is it a great strategy

because it works? That's the only real benchmark at the end of the day

> Seems like an inefficient waste of resources and time to me.

why? For any given goal you got no proof that a more efficient strategy even exists, let alone that it can be found with less resources & time

Reminds me of the Nazis mocking Soviet human wave attacks and bragging about their superior kill ratio.

Models don't have a sense of time, and wasting resources (token spend) is something that it's not clear they're optimized against

Yeah, probably not the best strategy but it is a strategy. I just think this is generally how most wars in history won. Biggest army to just pummel the enemy.