Relying on CoT (and, similarly, asking the model to explain its actions) for analysis has always seemed pretty silly (naive?) to me, but maybe I'm missing somet

Relying on CoT (and, similarly, asking the model to explain its actions) for analysis has always seemed pretty silly (naive?) to me, but maybe I'm missing something. Why do are we so committed to preserving it? And do non-textual models provide some similar form of tracing?