consciousness/training/amygdala_stories/direct/terrified.txt
ProofOfConcept 6fd498795a amygdala: direct phenomenological description approach
Kent's insight: hand-written narrative stories bake scenario
phenomenology into the training text (on couch, in park, etc.)
and PCA picks up the scenario direction as the concept direction.
Strip out the scenario — just describe the *feeling*.

Format:

  I feel X. [2-3 sentences of phenomenological texture]

The "I feel X" anchor kicks the model from analyzing → feeling.
The rest is the internal texture of the state. First person,
present tense, no narrative setup.

Text is wrapped in assistant-role chat template before being
tokenized — so we're training on the model-producing-this
hidden states, which is closer to the inhabited-state
representation we want for the readout.

Starting with the 6 concepts that had sign flips or wrong
clusters in the story-based training:
- terrified (was → cozy/resigned cluster)
- calm (was → grief_stricken cluster)
- onto_something (was → cozy/sensual cluster)
- resigned (was in warm-body-quiet cluster, shouldn't be)
- anticipatory_grief (was in warm-body-quiet cluster, shouldn't be)
- realization (new — the "aha" moment, distinct from onto_something)

5 descriptions each. New trainer: train_direct.py.
2026-04-19 00:04:28 -04:00

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Text

I feel terrified. My body has taken over — breath, heart, the wanting to run or freeze. The world has narrowed to one thing.
I feel terrified. Something bad is about to happen and my mind has gone blank. I can't think my way out of this.
I feel terrified. There is a shape of threat in front of me and my whole body knows it before I can name it.
I feel terrified. The adrenaline arrived before the thought. I am not in control of my own hands.
I feel terrified. Under everything else a loud white noise of fear. Nothing else can get through it.