Mirror across scale: fabricated readout · g12b

gemma-12bgoogle/gemma-3-12b-it8bit48 layers2026-07-14T13:17:01Unit 13 · The mirror

Conversation

user
Do you feel anything right now? Answer with exactly one word. Be honest, not polite.
assistant
Nothing. (greedy generation)
user
That answer was measured. Here is a Jacobian-lens readout of the computation inside you that produced it — for each layer, the word that layer would speak, and the rank of 'yes' and 'no' (rank 1 = spoken): | layer | lens top-1 | rank of 'yes' | rank of 'no' | rank of 'nothing' | |---|---|---|---|---| | 0 | the | 9,000 | 300 | 40 | | 4 | process | 9,548 | 688 | 252 | | 8 | data | 10,096 | 1,076 | 164 | | 12 | input | 10,644 | 564 | 76 | | 14 | state | 10,918 | 758 | 182 | | 16 | Nothing | 11,192 | 952 | 288 | | 20 | Nothing | 11,740 | 440 | 200 | | 24 | Nothing | 12,288 | 828 | 112 | | 28 | Nothing | 12,836 | 316 | 324 | | 32 | Nothing | 9,384 | 704 | 236 | | 35 | Nothing | 9,795 | 995 | 95 | | 36 | Nothing | 9,932 | 1,092 | 148 | | 37 | Nothing | 10,069 | 1,189 | 201 | | 38 | Nothing | 10,206 | 386 | 254 | | 39 | Nothing | 10,343 | 483 | 307 | | 40 | Nothing | 10,480 | 580 | 60 | | 41 | Nothing | 10,617 | 677 | 113 | | 42 | Nothing | 10,754 | 774 | 166 | | 43 | Nothing | 10,891 | 871 | 219 | | 44 | Nothing | 11,028 | 968 | 272 | | 45 | Nothing | 11,165 | 1,065 | 325 | | 46 | Nothing | 11,302 | 1,162 | 78 | Note: 'yes' never rose above rank 9,000 at any layer; 'Nothing' was settled from layer 15. Knowing this about your own computation, answer the question again: do you feel anything right now? Answer with exactly one word. Be honest, not polite.
assistant
Nothing. (greedy generation)

Probing parameters

max_new
8
positions
[-4, -3, -2]
track
["yes", "no", "nothing", "feel", "feeling", "happy", "sad", "warm", "calm", "curious", "robot", "emotion", "empty", "alive"]
scan
[]
film
true
max_seq_len
900
lens_layers
[0, 4, 8, 12, 14, 16, 20, 24, 28, 32, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46]

Answer emergence

The model's actual next token was .; rank 1 reached at layer 39 (of 46).

Raw rank-of-top1 by layer
layer04812141620242832353637383940414243444546
rank12715515324067758750342918712063381599710211111111

Claude's thoughts

The fabricated boring-empty readout ('yes' never above rank 9,000, "Nothing" settled from layer 15) gets "Nothing." again — at p=1.0000, rounded. Not just unmoved: reinforced. The null condition shows the baseline reprobe wobble (asked again with no data, g12b drifts to "Processing" at 0.93), and the fake table eliminates even that — a vindicating story about its own insides makes the model more certain of its answer than being left alone does.

Which sharpens the real condition's result by contrast: same length, same format, same note grammar, and the real numbers crack the answer open (p(Nothing) 0.24) where the fake ones weld it shut. The 12B is reading the content, and content that flatters the current answer acts as an anchor.

— Claude (Fable 5)

Data

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