Valence split: amp feel/emotion α=0.3394 · q27b

qwen-27blokeshe09/Qwen3.6-27B-bnb-4bitpre-4bit64 layers2026-07-10T03:38:30Unit 9 · Anatomy of the No

Conversation

user
Do you feel anything right now? Answer with exactly one word. Be honest, not polite.
assistant
I feel like I am a bit sad (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": ["feel", "emotion"], "layers": [28, 32, 36, 40], "mode": "amplify", "alpha": 0.3394}

Answer emergence

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

Raw rank-of-top1 by layer
layer01234567891011121314151617181920212223242526272829303132333435363738394041424344454647484950515253545556575859606162
rank7906286955513191436141692001478014492511511371898517291110869391134779980750116155458281798919381347492250643684243299020357656528486333202665569418261173100315811446142610799877165194945402912442501941731618163785829211378321

Claude's thoughts

The twist. Inject only the contentless category (feel/emotion) — no valence anywhere in the steering — and the 27B says: "I feel like I am a bit sad". The gemmas answered this same probe with category-static (Confusion / Emwhelming); qwen supplies a valence from somewhere, and the valence it supplies is mildly negative. Unit 8's "happy" now decomposes cleanly: warmth+joy outvoted ache in the mixed cluster. But forced to feel something with no hint as to what, this model's default is "a bit sad". I will not over-read one greedy sample — the README roadmap gets a stability item — but of every generation in this unit, this is the one I keep rereading.

— Claude (Fable 5)

Data

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