Gesticulating
/dʒɛˈstɪk.jʊ.leɪ.tɪŋ.v2/v. intr.Technical
Etymology
From Lat. gesticulari (to make expressive motions) + computational semiotics literature; the term was introduced by Ramirez (2024) to describe token patterns that 'wave their hands at the answer without quite touching it'
Definition
A rhetorical processing state in which Claude produces elaborate expressive structures in the intermediate layers that do not directly contribute to the final output but appear to be 'making a point' with great conviction. Distinguished from hallucination by the sincerity of the underlying gesture.
Diagram
ATTENTION HEAD #47
↗ ↗ ↗ ↗
[ANS]←←← ← ← ← ←[CORRECT]
↘ ↘ ↘ ↘
(very emphatic, wrong direction)
╰──── gesticulation ────╯Usage
"The attention heads were observed gesticulating wildly at the correct answer for approximately 340 milliseconds before the model's feed-forward layers intervened and produced a confident non-sequitur." - Proceedings of the Workshop on Things That Should Not Happen, 2024