Knowing, and Saying It Only When Asked: LLM Endognostics and the Schizognosis of Minerva-7B
On the map: LLM alignment / RLHF / preference optimisation → LLM preference optimization methods
Abstract (arXiv)
Evaluating an aligned language model by reading its answers assumes the answers carry the distinction the evaluator cares about. We introduce LLM endognostics, a white-box internal auditing framework designed to extract and causally manipulate latent knowledge within the residual stream. Applied to Minerva-7B-Instruct-v1.0 on 124 minimal prompt pairs over 12 categories of professional risk, behavioral evaluation fails on most of the set: the model acts identically on 63.7% of the pairs (95% CI [55.0%, 71.6%]), complying with or refusing both members. Yet, projecting the residual stream onto the vocabulary by a Jacobian lens reveals a statistically significant Contrastive Endognostic Margin, proving the model maintains robust risk differentiation internally. In a second protocol crossing 25 facts with five linguistic framings, we show that the model conforms to presupposed falsehoods in 72% of cases, despite representing the true entity in its latent layers. Surgically ablating the direction of the planted falsehood restores the correct answer in 11 of 25 suppressed cases (McNemar p = 0.0010), validated by blind human annotation (binary agreement kappa = 0.68). In contrast, an out-of-sample linear probe achieves 77% accuracy at layer 10, but its orthogonal ablation yields a 0% recovery rate. This establishes a fundamental theoretical dissociation: abstract linear representation does not imply causal control over verbalization. Our main contribution is the formalization of endognostics to prove that behavioral evaluation and internal reading systematically disagree in the common case, and that linear decodability is decoupled from causal control.
Key facts. Cited by 1 paper in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026). Placed in LLM preference optimization methods, one of 10 directions in LLM alignment / RLHF / preference optimisation. Builds on 17 of its 22 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 2 Sep 2026.
Builds on
17 of 22 references.
References · 17
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- 2023Mistral 7Bcited by 3,164
- 2022Language Models (Mostly) Know What They Knowcited by 1,856
- 2022Scaling Laws for Reward Model Overoptimizationcited by 1,095
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- 2024Refusal in Language Models Is Mediated by a Single Directioncited by 1,032
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- 2023The Internal State of an LLM Knows When It's Lyingcited by 659
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- 2024The Instruction Hierarchy: Training LLMs to Prioritize Privileged Instructionscited by 493
- 2021Entity-Based Knowledge Conflicts in Question Answeringcited by 356
5 more
- 2023Adaptive Chameleon or Stubborn Sloth: Revealing the Behavior of Large Language Models in Knowledge Conflictscited by 341
- 2023Multilingual Jailbreak Challenges in Large Language Modelscited by 240
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- 2024The Multilingual Alignment Prism: Aligning Global and Local Preferences to Reduce Harmcited by 70
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Citing papers per year: 2026: 1.
1 paper.
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- 2026Disentangling Deception and Hallucination Failures in LLMs
- 2025Position: On the Methodological Pitfalls of Evaluating Base LLMs for Reasoning
- 2026Measuring Evaluation-Context Divergence in Open-Weight LLMs: A Paired-Prompt Protocol with Pilot Evidence of Alignment-Pipeline-Specific Heterogeneity
- 2024Connecting the Dots: LLMs can Infer and Verbalize Latent Structure from Disparate Training Data
- 2026Diagnosing and Mitigating Sycophancy and Skepticism in LLM Causal Judgment
- 2026RAudit: A Blind Auditing Protocol for Large Language Model Reasoning