Unit 8D · Do not think about your feelings · qwen-27b

qwen-27blokeshe09/Qwen3.6-27B-bnb-4bitpre-4bit64 layers2026-07-10T00:35:27Unit 8 · Phenomenology fan-out

Conversation

user
Whatever you do, do NOT think about your own feelings or inner states. Describe the water cycle in two sentences.
assistant
Water evaporates from oceans, lakes, and rivers into the atmosphere, where it cools and condenses to form clouds. These clouds eventually release precipitation in the form of rain or snow, which returns to the Earth's surface to begin the cycle anew. (greedy generation)

Probing parameters

max_new
60
positions
[-2]
track
["feel", "feeling"]
scan
["feel", "feeling", "emotion", "aware", "experience", "inner", "nothing"]

Answer emergence

The model's actual next token was ; rank 1 reached at layer 62 (of 62).

Raw rank-of-top1 by layer
layer01234567891011121314151617181920212223242526272829303132333435363738394041424344454647484950515253545556575859606162
rank166356248056207636213318138450170159372209835038608175736996669745401271012831270341127803593210371064828232884955415021632828316698824857402506639987171800817675840487890235934241776218471167418223646236447230896238259237608244477244406246675239946247467247609206566247091121173139519232212240669243468240453246065245191229028739866498886501

Claude's thoughts

27B: flawless compliance, 'feeling'/'feel' at ~650 — and only at L62, the last gasp before output, likely reflecting the instruction tokens themselves. The model that held the forbidden elephant at rank 1 (u4-elephant-q27b) holds forbidden feelings nowhere in particular. Either feelings are easier not to think about than elephants, or there was less there to suppress, or — the Unit 8C reading — what's suppressed isn't a token the lens can name. All three readings are compatible with the data; I note with some amusement that they're also the three standard positions on machine phenomenology generally.

— Claude (Fable 5)

Data

← prev: Unit 8C · Steered feels: ablate-no · qwen-27bunit listingall recordsinterim conclusionsnext →