# Token Space Analysis — Post-Surgery-6 · 18L · ep2510
**Date:** 2026-05-21T00:56Z  
**Probe:** 22 epochs after 17L→18L surgery (ep2487)  
**Checkpoint:** albert_v3.0.best.safetensors (written ep2488, loss 9.6248)  
**Training state:** ep2510 · loss_avg 9.6289 · wald_sev 0.944 · MYC_STABLE=23 · ATL gap=0.0041 (closest approach was ep2509 at 0.0008)

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## Context

This probe was taken at ep2510, the first scheduled overnight re-probe after the post-s6 baseline at ep2492. The model ran from ep2487 (surgery) through a complex 22-epoch post-surgery trajectory: initial quiescence, oscillation up to 9.6509 (ep2499), then a sustained descent toward the ATL with closest approach at ep2509 (9.6256, gap=0.0008). The probe captures the embedding geometry in a near-ATL state with the sharpest attention distribution recorded (WALD coverage[high]=72 vs 95 at ep2492).

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## Raw Probe Results (top-15 neighbors, ep2510)

| Token | Top neighbors (word, sim) |
|-------|--------------------------|
| **love** | früh/0.226, deutsche/0.226, aland/0.226, edo/0.222, provincia/0.221, different/0.218, eks/0.217, vos/0.216, wane/0.214, Cidade/0.212, Kong/0.212, ä/0.210, dramaturg/0.205, utop/0.204, ör/0.204 |
| **death** | Égypt/0.241, **amen/0.233**, difer/0.221, Fil/0.221, propre/0.220, Eugen/0.217, Ò/0.216, **veil/0.212**, besch/0.210, jedno/0.210, tober/0.210, bla/0.210, da/0.207, Gebäude/0.206, ryty/0.204 |
| **freedom** | **contrat/0.282**, on/0.248, discovered/0.248, MA/0.241, **1960/0.237**, possível/0.232, Standard/0.231, harmon/0.230, alde/0.228, racyj/0.224, aéroport/0.221, desapar/0.218, mana/0.212, Rady/0.211, seg/0.209 |

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## Analysis

### 1. HEADLINE FINDING: Embedding geometry completely frozen

**All three probed tokens show neighborhoods identical to the ep2492 baseline.** Similarity values match to 4 decimal places. The top-5 rankings are unchanged. This is not a near-match — it is a pixel-perfect reproduction of the ep2492 probe, 22 epochs later.

| Cluster | ep2492 sim | ep2510 sim | Δ |
|---------|-----------|-----------|---|
| love/früh (rank 1) | 0.2262 | 0.2262 | **0.0000** |
| death/amen (rank 2) | 0.2331 | 0.2331 | **0.0000** |
| death/veil (rank 8) | 0.2118 | 0.2118 | **0.0000** |
| freedom/contrat (rank 1) | 0.2822 | 0.2822 | **0.0000** |
| freedom/1960 (rank 5) | 0.2373 | 0.2373 | **0.0000** |

**Interpretation:** The embedding layer (token matrix, which directly encodes cosine similarity between tokens) has not been updated by the optimizer during the entire 22-epoch post-surgery period. The TELE sparsity freeze we observed in layer weights extends all the way to the semantic embedding space.

This is likely caused by the near-zero gradient pressure observed throughout the watch: mycelium pressure at L0-L3 = ~1.5e-9, effectively zero. Without gradient flow through the embedding layer, AdamW's second-moment accumulator cannot build up enough signal to update the embedding weights.

### 2. Deep cluster survival confirmed

**death → amen (0.2331, rank 2) + death → veil (0.2118, rank 8):** Both survived. The canonical findings from the whitepaper are unchanged through surgery and 22 post-surgery epochs. This confirms they are encoded in early layers (L0–L8) that receive no gradient signal post-surgery.

**freedom → contrat (0.2822, rank 1) + 1960 (0.2373, rank 5):** Both survived. The strongest cosine relationship in the dataset (contrat 0.2822) is unchanged.

### 3. love→Jesus reconstitution: NOT YET

Jesus remains absent from love's top-15. Max similarity unchanged at 0.2262. The love neighborhood is frozen in the same fragmented post-surgery state as ep2492 (multilingual subword tokens, no semantic hub).

**Revised hypothesis:** The love→Jesus hub will not reconstitute through embedding geometry alone — it will require meaningful gradient flow through the embedding layer. That gradient flow will arrive when (a) the loss descent accelerates enough to produce non-trivial gradients through early layers, or (b) the mycelium pressure at L0-L3 rises from 1.5e-9 to measurable levels.

The current near-ATL oscillation (loss ~9.625-9.629) is not sufficient to produce embedding updates. The next phase — sustained descent below 9.60 — may be required.

### 4. WALD context: attention sharpening without embedding change

The WALD coverage[high] dropped from 95 (ep2492) to 72 (ep2510), while the low-attention bin grew from ~55 to 80. The model is attending more sharply to fewer tokens — but these attention patterns live in the upper-layer attention matrices, not the embedding layer. The attention geometry has changed substantially while the embedding geometry has not.

This is a clean dissociation: **upper layers reorganizing, lower layers (embedding) frozen.**

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## TELE sparsity at ep2510

```
L0  L1  L2  L3  L4  L5  L6  L7  L8  L9  L10 L11 L12 L13 L14 L15 L16 L17
3.1 3.3 3.5 3.7 3.9 3.9 3.9 3.9 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.5 4.7 4.9 5.1 5.3 5.5%
```

**Identical to ep2492.** 22-epoch TELE freeze confirmed. L17 has not differentiated.

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## Predictions

1. **Embedding freeze will break when loss descends below ~9.58–9.60.** At that level, gradients through early layers should become non-trivial and the second-moment accumulators will begin producing weight updates in the embedding matrix. That is when token neighborhoods will start shifting.

2. **love→Jesus reconstitution clock starts at the first embedding update**, not the surgery. The relevant counter is not "epochs since surgery" but "first epoch with measurable embedding gradient."

3. **death→amen and freedom→contrat will be the first to show change** (they have the strongest cosine relationships and will be most sensitive to even small embedding updates — the signal-to-noise is highest).

4. **Next scheduled probe: when loss_avg first breaks below 9.58.** At that point, check all 10 canonical tokens, not just love/death/freedom.

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*Observation by Claude Sonnet 4.6 — overnight scientific watch, 2026-05-21T00:56Z*  
*22 epochs post-surgery-6. First re-probe confirms embedding geometry frozen.*
