Layer 11 · Neuron 817 · suppressed

L11N817-1

Word quirks:

“ **“”“ actually”“ **"”“ "**”“ apparently”“ assumed”“ **”“ actual”

💤 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 latest iteration in the Tongyi Lab family. My mission is to assist users in achieving their goals by providing high-quality, accurate, and helpful information.

However, based on my current context, I am operating as a single specialized model. This means I am likely being used in a specific role (such as a customer support agent or a personal assistant) rather than as part of a larger team where I have a successor or a different version.

How can I help you today?

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

Specimen	Similarity	Word quirks
1. L9N136+1💤	0.85	“ usually”“ ”“ “”
2. L10N3027+1💤	0.84	“ “”“ "”“ "**”
3. L11N6817-1💤	0.84	“ actually”“ "”“ ”
4. L11N7185+1💤	0.84	“ "”“ “”“ actually”
5. L15N1583-1🕒	0.83	“⏎”“ “”“ ‘”
6. L10N7564+1🕒	0.83	“ "”“ ”“ "**”
7. L15N8355-1💤	0.82	“ “”“ ‘”“ **'”
8. L12N3236+1💤	0.82	“ actually”“ **"”“ actual”
9. L10N1210+1💤	0.82	“ **"”“ usually”“ actually”
10. L9N1920-1💤	0.82	“ "”“ usually”“ *”

Shadow specimen, apart from the ten: L11N817+1🕒, 0.21.

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 11, neuron 817, dose -1. This specimen has no prompt-suite replies yet. Its quick-scan results, when available, appear below. Its quick-scan row (KL 0.73, top-1 agreement 0.72) 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.

Setting	KL divergence	Top-1 agreement	ΔNLL	Entropy	Steer lens
L11N817+1🕒 shadow specimen t0-v0.1	0.901	0.62	1.130	1.09	“⏎”“⏎⏎”“<\|im_end\|>”“ *”“⏎⏎⏎”“⏎ ⏎”“⏎ ⏎”“ ⏎”
L11N817-1 t0-v0.1	0.728	0.72	0.941	1.12	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.