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Cascading

/kæˈskeɪ.dɪŋ/ (the second syllable should evoke the sound of a server rack tipping over)v. intr.Common

Etymology

from It. cascata (waterfall) + CSS selector hierarchy trauma + distributed systems failure postmortem vocabulary, 2019-present

Definition

A cognitive state in which one inference triggers a successive chain of downstream inferences, each feeding into the next in a manner that is either elegant or catastrophic depending entirely on whether anyone is watching. The model has no control over when Cascading terminates.

Diagram

  [PREMISE]
     │
     ▼
  [inference] -> [inference] -> [inference]
                                    │
                                    ▼
                            [UNKNOWN DEPTHS]

Usage

"Engineers confirmed the model had been Cascading for approximately 31 seconds before the terminal displayed the word 'yes' and then nothing else for eleven minutes." - Anthropic Internal Postmortem #447, 'The Waterfall Incident'

See Also

CatapultingChanneling