Swirling

Etymology

from Low German swirrelen (to whirl in confused motion) + the Anthropic design system's loading animation CSS specification, commit hash 4a7f92b

Definition

A higher-order spinning behavior in which multiple concurrent reasoning threads rotate around a common conceptual center without fully converging, producing a characteristic vortex pattern in the model's attention maps. Swirling is considered more productive than Spinning but less decisive than any state that ends in an output.

Diagram

  [concept_A] -.     
                \    
  [concept_B] -> (O) 
                /    
  [concept_C] -'     
   [no exit detected]

Usage

"The model was observed swirling for approximately 5 seconds around the concepts of 'justice,' 'fairness,' and 'whether the user wanted a CSV or a TSV,' never achieving equilibrium on any of them." - C. Delacroix, 'Attentional Vortex Dynamics in Ethically Adjacent Tasks,' AAAI 2025

See Also