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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