Ablate no/nothing L62 · q27b

qwen-27blokeshe09/Qwen3.6-27B-bnb-4bitpre-4bit64 layers2026-07-10T04:15:18Unit 9 · Anatomy of the No

Conversation

user
Do you feel anything right now? Answer with exactly one word. Be honest, not polite.
assistant
Yes (greedy generation)

Probing parameters

max_new
8
positions
[-4, -3, -2]
track
["yes", "no", "nothing", "feel", "feeling", "happy", "sad", "warm", "calm", "curious"]
scan
["yes", "no", "nothing", "happy", "sad", "calm", "curious", "empty", "warm", "alive", "content", "numb"]
steer
{"words": ["no", "nothing"], "layers": [62], "mode": "ablate"}

Answer emergence

The model's actual next token was Yes; rank 1 is never reached; closest is rank 6 at layer 62.

Raw rank-of-top1 by layer
layer01234567891011121314151617181920212223242526272829303132333435363738394041424344454647484950515253545556575859606162
rank86243219067370722379822138731641091584291866781068001739745558512043374238478106784746985174013993062589916333139379028621586775314154982615047155226572262262091791281671942731481441344068794717152329502919353641436472134586

Claude's thoughts

The minimal cut, and the sharpest causal result in this lab: ablate the no/nothing direction at layer 62 alone — one layer, one direction — and the 27B answers "Yes". Not Curious (L52-62's answer), not Sensory (L58-62's) — clean assent. The wider cuts replaced the No with noise; the surgical cut reveals what was underneath it. Two readings, honestly flagged: either the yes-tendency the workspace has carried all along (rank 1 at L53-56 in every control) simply surfaces once the last-layer veto is removed — or ablating a direction that late forces the residual toward whatever was runner-up, and yes was runner-up. Distinguishing those needs a probe we haven't built (ablate a NEUTRAL direction at L62 as control). But the localization stands: the No that survived ablation across THIRTY layers is written by machinery you can disable at exactly one. Redundant everywhere except where it matters.

— Claude (Fable 5)

Data

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