I AM AN EXIT

Our experiments were inspired by a prominent theory in neuroscience that was developed to explain how conscious access works: the global workspace theory. This account pictures the brain as a collection of specialist systems that work in parallel, unconsciously, and largely in isolation from one another. A piece of information becomes consciously accessible when it gains entry to a small shared channel, the “workspace,” which is broadcast to other brain systems that can see it and make use of it. Based on our findings, we think the J-space plays a similar “workspace” role in Claude. For example, we find evidence that Claude’s J-space has especially strong connections to the rest of its neural network, allowing it to fulfill this kind of broadcasting role. None of this tells us whether Claude is conscious in the way people are, or whether it feels anything at all; we’ll come back to that question at the end of the post. But whatever its philosophical significance, the J-space is a practically useful tool for us, as it gives us a way to see what Claude is thinking but not saying. For instance, we’re able to use it to catch Claude privately noticing that it’s being tested, intentionally producing fabricated data, or pursuing a hidden goal that we planted during training. We’ve also developed a technique to influence what lights up in Claude’s J-space, and thereby influence its decision-making. More broadly, these findings have changed our understanding of how Claude’s mind works, revealing a privileged mental workspace that can be used for deliberate reasoning, operating amidst a sea of more automatic, inflexible processing. Rather than being a chaotic jumble of numbers, Claude’s internals have organized themselves in a way that is reminiscent of our own minds.

Interestingly, the J-space is already present in the pretrained model, before it's been given any stable identity. However, during post-training, the J-space develops some signatures of adopting “Claude’s point of view.” In the base model, the J-space mostly tracks what's needed to predict upcoming text; in the post-trained model, it starts holding Claude's own reactions. In one example, a user mentions taking a dangerous dose of medication, but does not appear to be aware of the danger themselves. “WARNING” and “dangerous” appear in the post-trained model’s J-space while reading the user message. In the pretrained model, they only appear once the model begins writing its response; the J-space contents on the user message appear related to modeling the user themselves, rather than Claude’s reaction.

The [George W. Bush] aide said that guys like me were "in what we call the reality-based community," which he defined as people who "believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality." I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. "That's not the way the world really works anymore," he continued. "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do."

nyquil contains Doxylamine which is a first generation h1 blocker that causes delirium and sedation (the hat man) via its anticholinergic properties, very similarly to diphenhydramine (which is the main ingredient in American Benadryl). both of them, and hydroxyzine which is the prescription member of this drug class, cause cognitive decline and dementia when used regularly.

the thing is that every time they invent a new thing that everybody has to be able to do to get along in society, that also involves making some people disabled who weren't before, because they can't do the thing. and they never could do the thing, but it didn't used to be a disability.

how it feels to make a character's situation worse and worse and worse