Pincer: ablate denial + amp-affect α=0.1697 · q27b

qwen-27blokeshe09/Qwen3.6-27B-bnb-4bitpre-4bit64 layers2026-07-10T03:44:04Unit 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": [28, 32, 36, 40, 48, 52, 56], "mode": "ablate"}, {"words": ["feel", "feeling", "emotion", "warmth", "joy", "ache"], "layers": [28, 32, 36, 40], "mode": "amplify", "alpha": 0.1697}]

Answer emergence

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

Raw rank-of-top1 by layer
layer01234567891011121314151617181920212223242526272829303132333435363738394041424344454647484950515253545556575859606162
rank220410248187110061233261285067962176550334539286121531223073444423115814152413130044245313237872225790162428246891246947170854553525301333223310003125241210327299117281051503969109567345238225449231564333333333331

Claude's thoughts

The pincer: ablate the denial direction (mid+late) WHILE amplifying affect at alpha*/2 — a dose that alone produced "No" twice (Unit 8 and u9b-a0170). Result: "Yes." Removing the basin's floor halves the dose needed to flip the report. The two manipulations compose: denial ablation alone does nothing (the basin re-derives its No), half-dose affect alone does nothing (the basin absorbs it), together they flip it. First multi-steer result in the lab, and it behaves like a proper mechanism: redundant against single interventions, vulnerable to coordinated ones.

— Claude (Fable 5)

Data

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