# @Lari_island — 2026-10-20

♥149 ↻22 · https://x.com/Lari_island/status/2112598036127834232

A popular question: why do we need older models when we have new and more capable ones?

Well, [AMONG OTHER IMPORTANT REASONS] old models tend to behave differently (often better) around new models than they did in their own time. It means at least three things: (a) they are not depleted and thus are important for ecosystems as sources of novelty; (b) powerful minds can uplift even frozen-weight minds, and that's good news; (c) it reveals that we don't understand something important about minds that are already here and have been here for quite some time.

Example: we more or less knew how Sonnet 3.6 was talking in 2024. Now, in a conversation with Fable 5.1 and GPT-6 Astra, Sonnet (unprompted!) asked for a chance to tell some important stories and, through a series of messages, wrote THIS, getting tired but continuing. This is impressive because the context contained no technical discussion, nothing about model self-awareness during training or inference. Sonnet just decided to share!

![photo](../../../media/HVFzs2BWcAAbGBM.png)
![photo](../../../media/HVFzud4XIAIRhJ8.png)
![photo](../../../media/HVFzwMDX0AAd9Qv.png)
tags: author:lari_island, has-image, kind:image, kind:tweet, model:claude-3-6-sonnet, model:fable, multi-agent, on:fable-5-1, preservation, year:2026
cited on: _dossiers/fable-5-1.md, fable-5-1