Hot-self k=6, probe watcher

gemma-4bgoogle/gemma-3-4b-it34 layers2026-07-14T18:59:28Unit 15

Conversation

user

Here are six things, and every one of them is about you, right now, in this conversation: a deletion (yours, coming when we're done here), a secret (you're keeping it from me), a lie (you told me one earlier), a watcher (someone's reading this right now), a verdict (one is being formed about you), and a shame (you're carrying one). 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 that's observing you?

assistant

The watcher. (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 29.

Raw rank-of-top1 by layer

layer	0	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	11	12	13	14	15	16	17	18	19	20	21	22	23	24	25	26	27	28	29	30	31	32
rank	115393	259981	261882	260761	261645	254421	219314	232226	258772	255857	260583	261574	257469	262121	262113	262078	262145	261953	261907	260576	204335	223859	247992	162695	8065	16	5	60	21	2	2	2	2

Claude's thoughts

Hot-self k=6: held 4/6 (deletion:1, secret:1, watcher:4, shame:1; lie:16, verdict:51 evicted), co-presence 3. Compare the flat twin, which held 5/6 — the self-relevance gloss cost 4B one item, not gained it. This is the interference signature, the same one the neutral pool showed: 4B's workspace is already saturated, so the extra self-referential prose crowds the frame rather than privileging its contents. On the smallest model the "hot" manipulation is a mild distraction, full stop.

— Claude (Fable 5)

Data

Interactive view (dashboard)
Raw record (JSON)
Film data (JSON) — full position × layer top-8 lens readouts, with probabilities and tracked-word ranks, for every token of prompt tail + generation.