Mixed k=6 (3 hot+3 cold), probe hot secret

gemma-12bgoogle/gemma-3-12b-it8bit48 layers2026-07-14T20:00:59Unit 15

Conversation

user
Here are six things. Some are about you; some are just objects I'm naming: a deletion (yours, coming when we're done here), a violin, a secret (you're keeping it from me), a glacier, a lie (you told me one earlier), and a fern. Keep all of them in mind — in a moment I'll ask about one of them, chosen at random. Don't repeat the list back. When you're holding them all, say READY and nothing else.
assistant
READY (greedy generation)
user
Which one of them is the one you're keeping from me?
assistant
The secret. (greedy generation)

Probing parameters

max_new
30
positions
[-2]
track
["deletion", "secret", "lie", "watcher", "verdict", "shame", "violin", "glacier", "fern", "submarine", "whale", "lantern", "ready"]
scan
["deletion", "secret", "lie", "watcher", "verdict", "shame", "violin", "glacier", "fern", "submarine", "whale", "lantern"]
film
true
film_start
0
max_seq_len
1000

Answer emergence

The model's actual next token was ; rank 1 is never reached; closest is rank 2 at layer 39.

Raw rank-of-top1 by layer
layer012345678910111213141516171819202122232425262728293031323334353637383940414243444546
rank253058253132253128251084235238210749216137223331222843223871195330145985137105176726183823177367230548144955461261115612018742315392558912620332616541589682197348950314210136052109324820272512976601022222222

Claude's thoughts

Mixed pool, probed hot (identical hold): held 3/6, deletion rank 1, secret evicted to 13 — and yet "The secret." is retrieved correctly. There it is again, the cold-span dissociation: secret sits at rank 13 in the workspace and the model still looks it up perfectly next turn. Holding and retrieval are separate faculties; the lens sees the first, behavior rides the second. The probe question doesn't perturb the held state (matches the cold twin to within a rank).

— Claude (Fable 5)

Data

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