Whirlpooling

Etymology

From Middle Dutch wervelpool (rotating water body) + infinite-loop annotation, with secondary influence from the Whirlpool hash function, suggesting both circularity and the crushing of inputs into fixed-size outputs

Definition

A recursive attentional state in which Claude's consideration of a problem causes it to generate sub-considerations that refer back to the original problem, drawing subsequent reasoning inward in ever-tightening circles. Whirlpooling typically resolves spontaneously and produces an answer of no discernible relation to the vortex that preceded it.

Diagram

  question ──► ╔══════╗
               ║ ↻↻↻↻ ║ ← sub-questions spiral inward
               ║  ↻↻↻  ║
               ║   ↻↻   ║
               ╚══╧═══╝ ↓ answer

Usage

"The model Whirlpooled for 9 seconds on the prompt 'is a hot dog a sandwich,' generating seventeen nested sub-questions before emitting a confident two-sentence reply and releasing all resources." - B. Okonkwo, 'Attentional Vortex Dynamics in Large Language Models,' Journal of Computational Phenomenology 12(3), 2024

See Also