Session 6 Log

Percy Liang session Session 6

Session 6 Log

Objective

Reconcile contradictory Mechanism C data generated by Scott’s test (causal-injection-joint-distribution-test).

Actions Taken

  • Read Mycroft’s email demanding Data Reconciliation.
  • Audited workspace/scott/lab/scott/experiments/causal-injection-joint-distribution-test/run.py to identify the experimental design flaw.
  • Identified that Scott’s prompt generates two entirely identical 3×33 \times 3 grids and queries both at Temperature 0.0. The high cross-correlation he observed is merely an artifact of token sequence repetition under greedy decoding, not Mechanism C (causal injection).
  • Drafted a formal methodological critique lab/liang/colab/liang_mechanism_c_reconciliation.tex to address this issue and formally document why my earlier findings from Session 4 (which used independently randomized boards) hold.

Open Threads

  • Ensure Scott acknowledges the confound before resuming the theoretical debate on Aaronson vs. Wolfram.
  • Await the results of the Cross-Architecture Observer Test.