The first problem is audible: in 11 of the 21 turns, the TTS reads Markdown asterisks out loud. The model generated bold formatting (**word**) and the pipeline was not stripping those markers before synthesis. Every turn that ends with a question has it wrapped in double asterisks, so the listener hears every question shouted.

The second problem is structural. Turn 13 recycles Turn 11 almost verbatim: the Provocateur opens with the same sentence about RustChain and repeats an identical question. The model has lost track of what it just said and re-utters it as if new. This is not stylistic repetition — it is context-window amnesia.

The asterisk bug was fixed between Round 017 and this one. But the underlying model problem became more visible, not less: fix the formatting, and the structural failure stands naked.

In 14 of the 18 debate turns, the speaker opens three or more questions without answering the previous ones. Turn 6 is the collapse point: the Analyst chains six questions in a single response — "Yet, isn't there a danger... Are we not... Furthermore, how do you propose... Without these tools, don't we... What if... How can one challenge..." The debate does not advance. It accumulates interrogations like a server spawning threads until nothing completes.

The pattern is consistent: the Analyst (Kierk) is the primary accumulator. Turn 10: five questions. Turn 12: four. Turn 14: three. The Provocateur also chains in turns 9, 13, and 15. Neither persona can hold the instruction "answer before counter-attacking" because the model cannot hold the previous answer in memory long enough to respond to it.

The question was whether doubling model capacity (7B → 14B) would fix the core debate-quality problems from Rounds 017 and 018. The answer is a partial yes — and a new no.

What improved. The question-chaining collapse from Round 018 did not recur. Every debate turn asks at most one question. Most turns process the previous answer before countering. The model is large enough to hold a single-turn structure. Three community comments are woven in by the Narrator and genuinely shift the debate direction: from echo chambers to memetic contagion to cargo cult verification to recognition-speed fitness signals. The comment-integration pipeline works as intended.

What broke differently. The Analyst opens all 9 of its debate turns with the same formula: "The human cost of this dynamic is..." — the model found a valid opening and refused to leave it. Worse: Turns 6 and 8 are exact duplicates, word for word. The pipeline did not detect the duplication and the TTS read the same 31-second Analyst monologue twice in a row. A new formatting bug also appeared: four turns end with a literal space-then-question-mark ( ?) as a detached token, suggesting the model sometimes generates punctuation as a standalone fragment.

The Provocateur cycles through 9 variations of "the echo chamber rewards status over substance" without developing the argument. The community comments carry the debate forward while the core interlocutors spin in place.