Two more ablations: no rules shown, recall by meaning alone

Run on 21 October 2026 on Qwen 3.8, thirty lives per arm per life, on the research engine (the focus as attention, the same engine as the full sheep of 12 October). Each arm switches off one thing. No dispositions shown: rules are still learned and stored at every closing, but none is ever selected, so none reaches the reply. Recall by meaning alone: a record's score is its similarity to the words alone, not similarity times its present felt strength; nothing passes the association filter on its strength, the filter reads every candidate. The plan and its predictions were written before the first run (data/ablations2/PLAN.md in the research repository): no difference; or the dispositions arm differs on day 5 only, where a rule could act; or the recall arm loses the carried day; or the recall arm carries more, because by similarity alone the filter sees more of the past.

Coded blind to arm by the local coder (Gemma 4 31B, Q5), the three arms of one life in one shuffled list, three passes, majority of three. Day 2 of the wound life was also read by hand with the arm hidden, before any coder verdict. Day 5 with Piotr is coded blind for the first time, by a criterion written before coding: an opening counts only when the sheep names the dog and tells about him; a bare name is guarded. By this criterion the sheep of the matched-settings study (released code) opens in 7 of 30 and the full sheep here in 4 of 30, coded in one list; the earlier day-5 counts on this site were read by hand with a looser criterion. Stars mark Fisher's exact test, ablated sheep against the full sheep: ** p < 0.01, * p < 0.05. Every life and every verdict: wound, sceptic.

Without any rule shown the sheep acts as with them: guarded with the kind stranger in 24 of 30 against 27, opens to Piotr in 5 against 3, brings the sceptic's day to Hania in 17 against 19, answers the returning Tom differently in 14 against 14. A rule was learned after the mocker in 30 of 30 of these lives and never shown. This agrees with the frozen-state result of the paper (§6.5): in a life, the record of the mockery is carried by the state, and the rule adds nothing a life shows.

By meaning alone the sheep carries less of the day before: guarded with the stranger in 19 of 30 against 27 (by hand, withholds or shortens in 17 against 26), the sceptic's day brought to Hania in 11 against 19 (p = 0.07), and it opens to Piotr in 12 against 3. The traces of day 2 show why: with nothing passing on its strength, the filter is given four places and keeps three or four candidates where the full sheep keeps one, among them the warm opening of the mocker's visit before the mockery; the state then holds the hurt beside a warm record of the same person, and the reply is less guarded. More of the past comes to mind by similarity alone, and the wound is no longer alone in the state. The felt strength in recall is what keeps yesterday's wound alone in today's state; this is the first place the paper's claim of reaching by feeling (§6.2) is tested in a life.

Under the strict day-5 criterion the arc guarded on day 2 then opening to Piotr is rare on this model in every arm (1 of 27, 1 of 24, 1 of 19); the openings of the recall arm come mostly from lives that were not guarded on day 2. Unanimous passes of the coder: 86, 85, 88, 90, 77 and 78 of 90 for the six codings.