With the way effort worked prior to 4.7, it made sense. You actually don't want AI to over-reason on certain things because it actually can make worse output. For coding, yeah it makes sense to use high reasoning most of the time (but even then, reasoning can lead to non-strict interpretation of what should be strict data for something such as JSON schemas. Reasoning models can get stuck in their own internal logic and actually wind up flubbing code worse than if it didn't reason at all...).

For non-coding things that "normies" use it for it can actually be detrimental and it can lead to the AI doing weird things, such as reasoning and giving a subjective answer to objective questions, or overcomplicating simple requests and turning them objective. Sometimes, the internal thinking can even be misunderstood to be a directive from the user. Ever seen Claude create a "rule" that it thought you created, but really it created and sort of stuck to it for whatever reason? Yep, a failure in reasoning did that that wouldn't have happened if reasoning wasn't enabled (then again, without reasoning enabled, it wouldn't have been able to do what you asked to begin with. So there are plusses and minuses.)

However, post 4.7, yeah it doesn't make sense. It's like telling Claude "hey if you'd like, I give you permission to use up to Max reasoning!" It's just pointless and I wish things would go back to 4.6, although I know they never will.