First, this is not a "debate over the abilities" of LLMs. It's a proposed method to improve their performance, and the authors are free to call it however they think it makes sense.

Second, explicitly avoiding things that sound like anthropomorphisation is equally not helpful- why avoid a metaphor that works?

Third, it's really a pity that this pointless nitpicking is dominating the thread.

>this pointless nitpicking is dominating the thread.

What is dominating the thread are claims that the LLM operation in question is analogous to the function of sleep in humans. It obviously is not.

The anthropomorphization of LLMs has reached ridiculous proportions. Applying the same standards as used in this field to others would result in claims that laundry machines "hallucinated" that they had had sufficient water when they failed due to the faucet being turned off.