Computation Over Geometry: Meaning Identity Is Computed, Not Shipped in the Embeddings
Meaning identity (whether two sentences say the same thing after wording changes) is treated in retrieval and RAG as a geometric fact about independently encoded sentence vectors. We show that, for frozen off-the-shelf encoders and language models, it is not: identity is computed when both sentences share one forward pass, and is not a property of the embedding geometry those systems ship. On overlap-matched PAWS-X, purpose-built encoders (BGE, E5, GTE, MiniLM, E5-Mistral-7B) reach English confirm AUC only 0.55-0.65 (dense peak 0.70). Independently encoded last-token states of Llama 3, Mistral, and Qwen do no better; late fusion of the two vectors stays near chance. The same probe on a jo...
| Authors | Jiaqi Deng |
|---|---|
| Primary category | cs.CL |
| Published | 23 September 2026 |
| Last updated at source | 23 September 2026 |
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