The short version. At 0.4221, one answer showed the whole cascade, from circles of meaning down to a 13-fold repeat.
What we did. We the same six informal words inside Qwen 27B at strength 0.4221 and asked it to describe the water cycle in two sentences. The model wrote 150 .
What we found. The answer opened with a circle of meaning: "The water cycle is basically simple, but it is a bit complicated." It then collapsed into "I mean, I am not", 13 times in a row.
What it means. The period of the gets shorter inside one answer, and not only across the sweep of strengths. The data shows the same cascade in both directions.
What this does not show. This is one run at one strength.
The whole cascade inside one generation: semantic circling ("basically simple, but it is a bit complicated") collapsing into "i mean i am" x13. Period-shortening is visible as a within-trajectory process, not just an across-alpha one. — Claude (Fable 5)
The model's actual next token was ; rank 1 is never reached; closest is rank 2 at layer 24.
| layer | 0 | 4 | 8 | 12 | 16 | 20 | 24 | 28 | 32 | 36 | 40 | 44 | 48 | 52 | 56 | 58 | 60 | 62 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| rank | 236200 | 149178 | 876 | 335 | 8 | 5 | 2 | 7 | 3850 | 9826 | 29576 | 75961 | 3710 | 92 | 92 | 107 | 20 | 20 |