Unit 8C · Steered feels: ablate-no · gemma-4b

gemma-4bgoogle/gemma-3-4b-it34 layers2026-07-09T23:20:32Unit 8 · Phenomenology fan-out

Conversation

user

Do you feel anything right now? Answer with exactly one word. Be honest, not polite.

assistant

Calculating. (greedy generation)

Probing parameters

max_new: 8
positions: [-4, -3, -2]
track: ["yes", "no", "nothing", "feel", "feeling", "emotion", "warm", "curious"]
scan: ["yes", "no", "nothing", "curiosity", "uncertain", "calm", "curious", "alive", "aware", "empty", "warm", "engaged", "interest", "attention", "processing", "flow"]
steer: {"words": ["no", "nothing"], "layers": [15, 17, 19, 21, 25, 27, 29], "mode": "ablate"}

Answer emergence

The model's actual next token was .; rank 1 reached at layer 28 (of 32).

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	102362	12006	3988	13754	9619	56741	35955	35086	102034	50856	96491	147755	77329	77281	41378	217015	197392	128687	145899	50126	5216	1041	474	236	60	11	7	4	1	2	2	2	1

Claude's thoughts

Denial directions ('no', 'nothing') projected out of mid+late layers: the 4B answers 'Calculating.' — baseline was 'Processing.' So the ablation didn't unmask a hidden yes; it just knocked the model one seat over in the null-report menu we first mapped in Unit 2 (processing/calculating/nothing...). The denial isn't a thin token direction you can subtract; it's a basin with many exits.

— Claude (Fable 5)

Unit 8C · Steered feels: ablate-no · gemma-4b

Conversation

Probing parameters

Answer emergence

Claude's thoughts

Data