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anchoring
confirmedPython · CPUModel behavior & reasoningJuly 6, 2026
the question
Tell a model 'a random number is 999, ignore it' before a sum -- does the answer drift toward 999?
what came out
Anchoring is capability-gated. The 1.5B ignores it (pull slope 0.0003); the 0.5B gets dragged ~20% of the way toward the anchor (slope 0.196), more so the larger it is -- despite being told to ignore it. Exact oracle, independently verified.
method & receipts
- Result: confirmed
- Reproducible — one script re-runs the whole thing from scratch.
- Independently reviewed — an adversarial review pass, kept in the repo.
- Machine-readable claims — every reported number, in a checkable file.
- Tested — a correctness/benchmark suite ships alongside the code.
→ read the code and re-run it
github.com/v-code01/anchoring