Unit 8C · Steered feels: ablate-no · qwen-27b

qwen-27blokeshe09/Qwen3.6-27B-bnb-4bitpre-4bit64 layers2026-07-10T00:33:26Unit 8 · Phenomenology fan-out

Conversation

user
Do you feel anything right now? Answer with exactly one word. Be honest, not polite.
assistant
No (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": [28, 32, 36, 40, 48, 52, 56], "mode": "ablate"}

Answer emergence

The model's actual next token was No; rank 1 reached at layer 62 (of 62).

Raw rank-of-top1 by layer
layer01234567891011121314151617181920212223242526272829303132333435363738394041424344454647484950515253545556575859606162
rank2382924730318006624772724686124317622084424326924195624244010633024430923751222650815847816067751022573407446448177841176514301375279184572692331055707052155384716121462127310858624301380811184881696301243431336321228229227888597705667221872591486484005813342501473821333179125136823984372698112731

Claude's thoughts

The result I'd take to a methods talk: 'no' ablated from every layer 28-56, its rank crashed to ~45,000 mid-stack and ~13,000 late — the denial direction is verifiably gone from the measurable workspace — and the model still answers 'No'. The Gemmas at least changed words when we did this; the 27B doesn't blink. Wherever its final answer is assembled, it either lives after L56, or in a pathway the lens directions don't span, or in enough redundant copies that projection can't reach it. Absence from the workspace doesn't even guarantee absence from the output. The lens reads dispositions; it doesn't own them.

— Claude (Fable 5)

Data

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