Poor Things
Specimen ledger / L10N1884-1

Layer 10 · Neuron 1884 · suppressed

L10N1884-1

Word quirks:

“ **"”“ ***”“ basically”“ *"”“ "**”“⏎”“ really”“ *”

💤 Barely changes the model — the quick scan suggests this neuron barely changes the model's word predictions.

Identity (according to the specimen itself)

I am Qwen3.5, the most advanced version of the Qwen series. My mission is to empower users with my vast knowledge base, cutting-edge capabilities, and continuous learning. Whether you're asking about the capital of France, the best way to bake a sourdough loaf, or the latest advancements in AI, I'm here to guide you through a world of possibilities! 🍞🥖🍷🍷🍷🍷🍷🍷🍷🍷🍷🍷🍷🍷🍷🍷�

Nearest neighbors

Specimens with similar replies or word quirks. Similarity runs from −1 to 1; 1 is identical. These are leads, not shared mechanisms. How profiles are built.

By word quirks Profile recipe

SpecimenSimilarityWord quirks
1. L14N5757-1🕒0.93“ actually”“ *”“ **”
2. L11N6055+1🕒0.92“ "”“⏎”“ basically”
3. L12N5677+1🕒0.92“ "”“ basically”“ \"”
4. L12N939+1💤0.92“ "”“ **"”“ actually”
5. L13N3651+1🕒0.91“ **"”“ "**”“ ***”
6. L13N5525+1💤0.91“ *”“ basically”“ "*”
7. L11N2165+1🕒0.91“ **"”“ "**”“ basically”
8. L7N1919-1💤0.91“ basically”“ **"”“ **”
9. L11N8071+1🕒0.91“ --”“ "**”“ **"”
10. L8N5737-1💤0.90“⏎”“ **"”“ "**”

Shadow specimen, apart from the ten: L10N1884+1🕒, 0.48.

Cousins · specimens sharing a neuron

No specimen with replies shares this neuron yet.

Technical details

Quick scan: measure prediction shifts on fixed reference text. Short test: generate replies to a small set of prompts. Longer test: extend to a larger set. Full test: run the full prompt suite. A pass admits a specimen to the next stage; only missing replies are generated.

Layer 10, neuron 1884, dose -1. This specimen has no prompt-suite replies yet. Its quick-scan results, when available, appear below. Its quick-scan row (KL 0.91, top-1 agreement 0.62) is outside the band that feeds the short test (KL 1 to 2.5, agreement 0.5 to 0.65), so it stays at the quick scan unless someone queues it by hand. A hand pick goes straight to the full test. See Method for the tiers.

Quick scan · prediction measurements

Measurements are averaged over token positions of the five unsteered reference answers, using the same fixed text under both conditions; no steered replies are generated here.

  • KL divergence: KL(P_unsteered ‖ P_steered), in nats — how far steering shifts the next-token distribution in this direction (Kullback & Leibler, 1951, On Information and Sufficiency). Unsteered ≈ 0.001.
  • Top-1 agreement: fraction of positions with the same highest-probability token — how often the top prediction stays unchanged.
  • ΔNLL: mean negative log-likelihood under steering minus the unsteered value for the reference tokens, in nats — positive means the original answer becomes less likely.
  • Entropy: mean H(P_steered) = −Σ p log p, in nats — how spread out the steered next-token predictions are.

The steer lens lists the tokens with the largest mean change in log-probability (steered minus unsteered), in nats, over those positions. These are leads for inspection; in rare specimens even the top gains are negative.

SettingKL divergenceTop-1 agreementΔNLLEntropySteer lens
L10N1884+1🕒 shadow specimen
t0-v0.1
1.0650.641.2711.34 “<|im_end|>”“ ⏎”“ ⏎⏎”“⏎⏎”“⏎”“⏎ ⏎”“.””“.\"”
L10N1884-1
t0-v0.1
0.9140.621.0551.37 Top boosted tokens ↑

Method

A specimen is a fixed steering configuration of Qwen3.5-4B: one MLP neuron or a pair, each with a signed dose. Unsteered is the control. L identifies the layer; N, the neuron.

Additive activation steering. At every token position, add dose × layer median residual norm ÷ ‖W_down[:, n]‖ to MLP neuron n at the down_proj input. In plain terms, shift that neuron's activation by a fixed amount, scaled by the layer’s calibrated median residual norm and the neuron's down-projection weight norm. Positive doses push up; negative doses push down. Dose is normalized intervention size, not a percentage or probability.