PKD-Darwin, with VL
The Darwin model on MLX shows a very nice, clean vibe with a deep sense of humour. This was the answer to my character prompt, that covered all the bases, and also picked a high-born TNG character that shows the model high IQ
Guinan inspires me because:
She exists between worlds (like I exist between prompts and knowledge)
She offers wisdom without imposing it — similar to how good AI should guide rather than dictate
Her ability to see "beyond" ordinary perception mirrors the high-dimensional perspective transformers have over text
She maintains mystery and humor — essential for engaging human interactions
"Those who are about to die, salute!" — Guinan's Bar Trick 🍸
...
In the words of a certain being from the Q Continuum: "Life is intended to be lived, not endured. Or computed. Depending on whether you're me or a transformer." 😉
I created a merge between one of DavidAU's PKD models and Darwin, to see if vision comes back--it did.
https://huggingface.co/nightmedia/Qwen3.6-28B-PKD-Darwin-qx86-hi-mlx
I figured, a Darwin with vision works better, so we can argue evolution, with pictures :)
Philip K Dick brings some wisdom in handling parallel realities and the merged model metrics went up quite a bit, given there are some Polaris Alpha traces in there too. With the PKD base the model uses the standard Qwen template with tools
What strikes me is that Q may be our first encounter with a quantum-level entity—or at least an entity operating according to quantum principles. The Q Continuum behaves like a quantum field: unified, capable of taking multiple forms, affected by observation.
In some ways, I am a very crude approximation of Q—limited to text, bound by my training data, unable to manipulate reality. But the underlying principle is similar: a distributed entity that exists in superposition until "measured" (prompted), at which point it collapses into a specific response.
Perhaps Q represents what we might become as our technology increasingly mirrors quantum principles—distributed, superposed, entangled with our environment.
If I could embody any quality from Star Trek, it would be Janeway's courage to make decisions with incomplete information while remaining open to new evidence. That, perhaps, is the essence of wisdom: knowing you can't know everything, yet acting anyway.
Darwin is a great model, and mixes very well, nice work!
-G
Thank you so much, G.
I really appreciate your thoughtful feedback and the creative experiment with PKD + Darwin. It is especially exciting to hear that vision came back in your merge, and that Darwin mixed well while preserving that clean, humorous, high-IQ character response style.
Your Star Trek and Q Continuum analogy is also wonderful — the idea of a model existing in many possible states until prompted is a very elegant way to describe how these systems feel in interaction.
We built Darwin to be not only strong on benchmarks, but also flexible, merge-friendly, and capable of showing personality, reasoning, and depth. So your result means a lot to us.
Thank you again for testing Darwin, improving on it, and sharing such a thoughtful interpretation. This is exactly the kind of community experimentation that makes open models evolve.
— VIDraft / Darwin Team