retardation

noun 5 senses

a decrease in rate of change

Qwen3 8B
DeepSeek V3
Mistral 7B

Panels 3, 4 and 5 are computed per model. Switch to see them disagree.

1 Your word measured

“the deceleration of the arms race”

noun 5 senses 10 synonyms 1 antonyms

Definitions come from WordNet, a hand-curated dictionary.

2 To an AI, it's pieces measured
DeepSeek V3 retardation 1 token
Mistral 7B ret ard ation 3 tokens
Qwen3 8B retard ation 2 tokens

This is the tokenizer splitting text, not the model understanding it.

3 Synonyms, antonyms, and the AI measured
Qwen3 8B
DeepSeek V3
Mistral 7B

This model splits retardation into 2 pieces, so it has no vector of its own here: this is the average of its fragments, and the results below are correspondingly rough.

Dictionary synonyms measured

deceleration0.46 lag0.04 slowing0.04 retardant retardent mental retardation backwardness slowness subnormality slowdown

Dictionary antonyms measured

acceleration is the dictionary opposite of retardation, yet this model puts it closer than 2 of the 3 synonyms it can score. Opposites share the sentences a word lives in, so cosine alone cannot tell them apart - which is why the dictionary seeds this list rather than the geometry.

Shade shows how close the model puts each word to retardation. 3 of 10 dictionary synonyms are in this build; the rest have no vector to compare yet.

Dictionary synonyms measured

deceleration0.12 slowing0.11 lag0.06 retardant retardent mental retardation backwardness slowness subnormality slowdown

Dictionary antonyms measured

acceleration is the dictionary opposite of retardation, yet this model puts it closer than every one of the 3 synonyms it can score. Opposites share the sentences a word lives in, so cosine alone cannot tell them apart - which is why the dictionary seeds this list rather than the geometry.

Shade shows how close the model puts each word to retardation. 3 of 10 dictionary synonyms are in this build; the rest have no vector to compare yet.

This model splits retardation into 3 pieces, so it has no vector of its own here: this is the average of its fragments, and the results below are correspondingly rough.

Dictionary synonyms measured

deceleration0.31 slowing0.14 lag0.04 retardant retardent mental retardation backwardness slowness subnormality slowdown

Dictionary antonyms measured

acceleration is the dictionary opposite of retardation, yet this model puts it closer than 2 of the 3 synonyms it can score. Opposites share the sentences a word lives in, so cosine alone cannot tell them apart - which is why the dictionary seeds this list rather than the geometry.

Shade shows how close the model puts each word to retardation. 3 of 10 dictionary synonyms are in this build; the rest have no vector to compare yet.

Model neighbours are distributional, not dictionary synonyms. Two words can be close because they appear in similar sentences, which is why an antonym can outscore a synonym here.

4 Its personality measured
Qwen3 8B
DeepSeek V3
Mistral 7B

This model splits retardation into 2 pieces, so it has no vector of its own here: this is the average of its fragments, and the results below are correspondingly rough.

rare common
concrete abstract
casual formal
everyday technical
negative positive
mild intense
powerless powerful
small big
rare common
concrete abstract
casual formal
everyday technical
negative positive
mild intense
powerless powerful
small big

This model splits retardation into 3 pieces, so it has no vector of its own here: this is the average of its fragments, and the results below are correspondingly rough.

rare common
concrete abstract
casual formal
everyday technical
negative positive
mild intense
powerless powerful
small big

Scores are projections onto axes we defined from anchor words, not labels the model assigns.

5 Surprising neighbours measured
Qwen3 8B
DeepSeek V3
Mistral 7B

This model splits retardation into 2 pieces, so it has no vector of its own here: this is the average of its fragments, and the results below are correspondingly rough.

These sit just outside the closest neighbours in panel 3, and no dictionary lists any of them as related to retardation. That gap is the model’s own learned association.

These sit just outside the closest neighbours in panel 3, and no dictionary lists any of them as related to retardation. That gap is the model’s own learned association.

This model splits retardation into 3 pieces, so it has no vector of its own here: this is the average of its fragments, and the results below are correspondingly rough.

These sit just outside the closest neighbours in panel 3, and no dictionary lists any of them as related to retardation. That gap is the model’s own learned association.

These are statistical associations in the training data, not the model thinking.