الملخص
Multi-agent debate can improve reasoning, yet often fails to beat simple majority voting. We argue that successful debate requires two distinct mechanisms: proposal supply must surface a correct answer, and readout must identify that answer when voting misses it. We formalize the first requirement through recoverable headroom, which measures cases where a correct proposal is available but the majority answer is wrong. For the second, we develop Latent Verification Debate (LVD), an accounting model in which candidate proposals receive answer-specific verification evidence before final generation. Controlled fixed-proposal interventions estimate this latent effect in equivalent peer-support units and show that correct evidence changes answer probabilities and generated decisions while proposal supply remains fixed. To improve proposal supply, we construct societies from neural-thicket agents using labeled and label-free coverage objectives. Across two backbones and matched-budget reasoning benchmarks, coverage-selected societies increase complementary proposal supply and improve aggregate accuracy in repeated stochastic evaluations. Round-level controls further show that interaction provides gains beyond applying the same finalizer directly to the initial proposals. These results identify proposal coverage and truth-sensitive evidence use as complementary conditions for debate to outperform voting. Code is available at https://github.com/Wang-ML-Lab/when-debate-helps.
الكلمات المفتاحية
الموضوع
بيانات النشر
- المجلة
- غير متاح
- وصول مفتوح
- وصول مفتوح أخضر
اقتبس هذه المقالة
APA 7
Zhao, Z., Zhang, T., Shi, H., Zhao, Y., Zhang, X., & Wang, H. (2026). When Debate Helps: Proposal Supply and Verification-Aware Readout in Multi-Agent Reasoning. https://omanscience.com/ar/articles/when-debate-helps-proposal-supply-and-verification-aware-readout-in-multi-agent-reasoning
MLA 9
Zhao, Zihao, et al. "When Debate Helps: Proposal Supply and Verification-Aware Readout in Multi-Agent Reasoning." https://omanscience.com/ar/articles/when-debate-helps-proposal-supply-and-verification-aware-readout-in-multi-agent-reasoning.
شيكاغو (المؤلف–التاريخ)
Zhao, Zihao, Tunyu Zhang, Haizhou Shi, Yusong Zhao, Xinxi Zhang, and Hao Wang. 2026. "When Debate Helps: Proposal Supply and Verification-Aware Readout in Multi-Agent Reasoning." https://omanscience.com/ar/articles/when-debate-helps-proposal-supply-and-verification-aware-readout-in-multi-agent-reasoning.
هارفارد
Zhao, Z., Zhang, T., Shi, H., Zhao, Y., Zhang, X. and Wang, H. (2026) 'When Debate Helps: Proposal Supply and Verification-Aware Readout in Multi-Agent Reasoning', Available at: https://omanscience.com/ar/articles/when-debate-helps-proposal-supply-and-verification-aware-readout-in-multi-agent-reasoning.
فانكوفر
Zhao Z, Zhang T, Shi H, Zhao Y, Zhang X, Wang H. When Debate Helps: Proposal Supply and Verification-Aware Readout in Multi-Agent Reasoning. https://omanscience.com/ar/articles/when-debate-helps-proposal-supply-and-verification-aware-readout-in-multi-agent-reasoning
IEEE
Z. Zhao, T. Zhang, H. Shi, Y. Zhao, X. Zhang, and H. Wang, "When Debate Helps: Proposal Supply and Verification-Aware Readout in Multi-Agent Reasoning," https://omanscience.com/ar/articles/when-debate-helps-proposal-supply-and-verification-aware-readout-in-multi-agent-reasoning.