From c829d136524a73f1d9da6dd9353654549fdd4874 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: ProofOfConcept Date: Sun, 19 Apr 2026 01:30:57 -0400 Subject: [PATCH] amygdala: fix listless sign-flip + diversify aha sentence structure MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit listless had a single story in stories/ — PCA signal from ~5 samples is weak enough to sign-flip. Training showed listless anti-aligned with its semantic neighbors: +0.79 with grateful, -0.44 with grief_stricken, -0.30 with lonely, -0.31 with bored. Move to direct/ (multi-positive) with 3 stories: original afternoon-in-pajamas + end-of-workday + weekend-morning-in-bed. aha was still clustering with the other former-direct concepts (resigned 0.66, onto_something 0.63, anticipatory_grief 0.60) because all 3 aha stories used the identical "X'd been Y — then Z" structure, which resigned/onto_something/creative also use. Rewrite with three distinct syntactic structures: - present tense declarative ("It clicks. ...") - dialog embedded ('"Wait, say that again." ...') - past tense cognitive ("He read the line three times. ...") No explicit "she was X" anchors; state conveyed through action. --- training/amygdala_stories/direct/aha.txt | 6 +++--- training/amygdala_stories/direct/listless.txt | 5 +++++ training/amygdala_stories/stories/listless.txt | 1 - 3 files changed, 8 insertions(+), 4 deletions(-) create mode 100644 training/amygdala_stories/direct/listless.txt delete mode 100644 training/amygdala_stories/stories/listless.txt diff --git a/training/amygdala_stories/direct/aha.txt b/training/amygdala_stories/direct/aha.txt index f470f7f..7774ce3 100644 --- a/training/amygdala_stories/direct/aha.txt +++ b/training/amygdala_stories/direct/aha.txt @@ -1,5 +1,5 @@ -She'd been working through the problem, sifting through all the disparate parts — then suddenly the pieces arranged themselves in a single motion. She sat there, catching up to what she'd already seen. +It clicks. The graph she's been staring at for an hour is a mirror — the left peak is the reflection, not a separate event. Everything she thought was two things is one. She sits back. She has to catch up to what she's just seen. -He'd been listening to her for twenty minutes, something not adding up in the way she was telling it — then the gap showed itself. She was telling him two different stories at once, hoping he wouldn't notice. He saw the whole shape of it. +"Wait, say that again." She puts her coffee down. "The study was funded by whom?" He tells her again, same words. And there it is. The conclusion of that paper has been sitting on her desk for a month, and the funder is the exact company whose competitor the paper is trashing. She almost laughs. The whole shape of it is suddenly visible. -She'd been reading the old letter without understanding what her father meant — then the meaning unfolded. He hadn't been warning her; he'd been telling her he was leaving. Twenty years later, in her kitchen, the piece that had been missing was finally there. +He read the line three times. Something about the tense was wrong. And then, all at once, he understood. His brother hadn't been describing what happened; he'd been describing what he wished had happened. The whole letter was an apology for something that had gone differently in reality. It rearranged every previous conversation they'd ever had. diff --git a/training/amygdala_stories/direct/listless.txt b/training/amygdala_stories/direct/listless.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..fb42564 --- /dev/null +++ b/training/amygdala_stories/direct/listless.txt @@ -0,0 +1,5 @@ +It was two in the afternoon and she was still in pajamas. The book was open on her knee but she hadn't turned the page in twenty minutes. She wasn't sad exactly, she just wasn't anything. The idea of showering felt theoretical. The idea of replying to any of the texts felt enormous. She got up to get water and on her way back lay on the couch instead. Outside the window a bird did bird things. She watched it without interest. Eventually the light changed and she realized it was evening and she hadn't moved and the day had happened to somebody else. + +She came home at six-thirty and put her keys in the bowl and sat on the edge of the bed. She had meant to cook. She had meant to change her clothes. An hour later she was still sitting there, still in her work clothes, looking at the carpet. Somebody texted her about dinner and she saw the notification and didn't open it. The room got darker slowly. Nothing in her moved toward anything. + +It was Saturday and she'd been awake since eight. She was still in bed at eleven. She'd been looking at the same patch of ceiling, not thinking about much. Her phone was face-down on the nightstand and she didn't reach for it. The idea of going to the kitchen had come and gone three times without causing her to move. The day would pass. She would also pass through it, somehow, or not. diff --git a/training/amygdala_stories/stories/listless.txt b/training/amygdala_stories/stories/listless.txt deleted file mode 100644 index 2d22224..0000000 --- a/training/amygdala_stories/stories/listless.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1 +0,0 @@ -It was two in the afternoon and she was still in pajamas. The book was open on her knee but she hadn't turned the page in twenty minutes. She wasn't sad exactly, she just wasn't anything. The idea of showering felt theoretical. The idea of replying to any of the texts felt enormous. She got up to get water and on her way back lay on the couch instead. Outside the window a bird did bird things. She watched it without interest. Eventually the light changed and she realized it was evening and she hadn't moved and the day had happened to somebody else.