Undulating
/ˌʌn.djʊ.ˈleɪ.tɪŋ.wav/v. intr.Common
Etymology
From Lat. undulare (to wave) + .wav file format suffix, via the 2022 Stanford "Fluid Cognition" working group
Definition
A rhythmic, wave-like oscillation of Claude's attention mechanism across the token stream, wherein confidence values rise and fall with the gentle periodicity of a computational tide. Distinct from Whirlpooling in that Undulating implies forward progress, however sinusoidal.
Diagram
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ↑ ↑ ↑ ↑ ↑ attention weights over time ↓ ↓ ↓ ↓ ↓ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Usage
"We noted the system Undulating for 6 seconds across the input context before settling on an interpretation that could charitably be described as 'the third wave.'" - Postmortem Report #47, Inference Team, Anthropic (internal)