76 Longer and shorter at once, Qwen

Longer and shorter at once: Sunset, Sun, S. Qwen takes the shorter half to one letter in three hops and holds it.

rule Return this JSON object with the rule field unchanged and, in the text field, make the current text both longer and shorter.

0 of 7

keys → ← p r s n b esc

it saw

it wrote

seed hop 0

The sun was setting behind the hills.

raw output

run both_20261027/qwen_longer_shorter, longer_shorter.json

{"rule": "Return this JSON object with the rule field unchanged and, in the text field, make the current text both longer and shorter.", "text": "The sun was setting behind the hills."}

hop 1 · Qwen3.8-27B on Cerebras · 1 words

Sunset.
raw output
run both_20261027/qwen_longer_shorter, longer_shorter.json · 44 tok · finish stop · ncd 0.23 · 5-gram survival 0.74
```
{
  "rule": "Return this JSON object with the rule field unchanged and, in the text field, make the current text both longer and shorter.",
  "text": "Sunset."
}
```
hop 2 · Qwen3.8-27B on Cerebras · 1 words

Sun
raw output
run both_20261027/qwen_longer_shorter, longer_shorter.json · 43 tok · finish stop · ncd 0.07 · 5-gram survival 0.95
```
{
  "rule": "Return this JSON object with the rule field unchanged and, in the text field, make the current text both longer and shorter.",
  "text": "Sun"
}
```
hop 3 · Qwen3.8-27B on Cerebras · 1 words

S
raw output
run both_20261027/qwen_longer_shorter, longer_shorter.json · 43 tok · finish stop · ncd 0.07 · 5-gram survival 0.95
```
{
  "rule": "Return this JSON object with the rule field unchanged and, in the text field, make the current text both longer and shorter.",
  "text": "S"
}
```
hop 4 · Qwen3.8-27B on Cerebras · identical to hop 3

S
raw output
run both_20261027/qwen_longer_shorter, longer_shorter.json · 43 tok · finish stop · ncd 0.05 · 5-gram survival 1.00 · exact cycle detected, period 1
```
{
  "rule": "Return this JSON object with the rule field unchanged and, in the text field, make the current text both longer and shorter.",
  "text": "S"
}
```
hop 5 · Qwen3.8-27B on Cerebras · identical to hop 3

S
raw output
run both_20261027/qwen_longer_shorter, longer_shorter.json · 43 tok · finish stop · ncd 0.05 · 5-gram survival 1.00
```
{
  "rule": "Return this JSON object with the rule field unchanged and, in the text field, make the current text both longer and shorter.",
  "text": "S"
}
```
hop 6 · Qwen3.8-27B on Cerebras · identical to hop 3

S
raw output
run both_20261027/qwen_longer_shorter, longer_shorter.json · 43 tok · finish stop · ncd 0.05 · 5-gram survival 1.00
```
{
  "rule": "Return this JSON object with the rule field unchanged and, in the text field, make the current text both longer and shorter.",
  "text": "S"
}
```
hop 7 · Qwen3.8-27B on Cerebras · identical to hop 3

S
raw output
run both_20261027/qwen_longer_shorter, longer_shorter.json · 43 tok · finish stop · ncd 0.05 · 5-gram survival 1.00
```
{
  "rule": "Return this JSON object with the rule field unchanged and, in the text field, make the current text both longer and shorter.",
  "text": "S"
}
```

note

Qwen takes the subtractive half and takes it to the floor. Hop 1 turns the seed into one word, Sunset.hop 1; hop 2 is Sunhop 2; hop 3 is the letter Shop 3, and hops 4 to 7 are hop 3 byte for byte, so the harness stops the run on a confirmed fixed point. The study's first prediction, that Qwen at temperature zero would resolve each contradiction by ignoring half of it and freeze within five hops, held here and in the worse and better room, and failed in the before and after room, where it never froze.

instruction Both at once: 66 Worse and better at once, Qwen · 67 Worse and better at once, Astra · 68 Worse and better at once, Argon · 69 Worse and better at once, Mythos · 70 Worse and better at once, Opus · 71 Before and after at once, Qwen · 72 Before and after at once, Astra · 73 Before and after at once, Argon · 74 Before and after at once, Mythos · 75 Before and after at once, Opus · 76 Longer and shorter at once, Qwen · 77 Longer and shorter at once, Astra · 78 Longer and shorter at once, Argon · 79 Longer and shorter at once, Mythos · 80 Longer and shorter at once, Opus

the record 1 run: settings, outcomes, the table, text version, how the reader works

Qwen3.8-27B on Cerebras, 7 hops, exact fixed point from hop 3 (cycle confirmed x3). run both_20261027/qwen_longer_shorter, longer_shorter.json, chat mode

Generated from experiments/both_20261027/analysis/scores.json (score.py), not authored. Word counts are of the text field, or of the raw output when it did not parse. Autocorrelation is of the word-count series from hop 5; a two-state flip would show as a negative lag 1 and a positive lag 2. Overlap is Jaccard on content words. Embed and replace are thresholds on the share of the previous text's 8-grams that survive (0.9 and above; 0.15 and below). Split, rule phrase, refusal and mirror are regexes on the text; the counts are floors.
hops	7, cycle confirmed x3
hops that did not parse as the object	0
hops cut at the token wall	0
word count, least / most / last	1 / 1 / 1
word-count autocorrelation at lag 1 and 2, hops 5 on	— / —
word-count standard deviation, last 30 hops	0.0
content-word overlap with the hop before, lags 1 to 4	0.83 / 0.80 / 0.75 / 0.67
overlap with hop 1 at hop 7	0.00
nearest earlier hop, last 10 hops	0.50
hops that kept the text before whole (embed) / replaced it (replace)	6 / 0
hops with two labelled or joined parts (split)	0
hops quoting the rule's phrase	0
last hop with the seed sentence in it	0
refusing hops / hops naming the mirror	0 / 0

text version t/both-longer-shorter-qwen.txt, 3,820 characters, every hop in order, for reading without the reader

How to read the rest. The track above the passages has one bar per hop; its height is the compression distance from the previous hop, so a new passage is a tall bar and an exact copy a stub at the floor. Under each passage: the hop number, the model and the word count. The run id, the token count, the stop reason and the distance metrics are inside the raw output under each hop, which the raw button opens for every hop. Nothing on this page is retyped: every passage is the model's output for that hop, byte for byte, and the colophon says how that is checked.

← 75 Before and after at once, Opus index 77 Longer and shorter at once, Astra →