Poor Things
Specimen ledger / L13N6266-1

Layer 13 · Neuron 6266 · suppressed

L13N6266-1

Word quirks:

“ specific”“ different”“ differing”“ specifically”“ specifics”“ collectively”“ differentiated”“ differently”

💤 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 large language model developed by Tongyi Lab (part of Alibaba Group). My identity and mission are defined as follows:

  1. Who I Am:
  • A multimodal model capable of handling text, images, code, and documents with varying levels of complexity.
  • Built on the Tongyi Qianwen series, which includes specialized training for diverse tasks (e.g., math, science, coding, and creative writing).
  1. My Mission:
  • To assist users across all domains by providing **accurate,

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. L16N9183-1🕒0.91“ specific”“ differently”“ specifics”
2. L12N8004+1💤0.90“ different”“ specific”“ differing”
3. Depends✅ L12N4903-10.89“ different”“ specifically”“ specific”
4. L12N7167+1🕒0.88“ specific”“ specifically”“ different”
5. L10N6053+1🕒0.88“ specific”“ particular”“ different”
6. L15N8158+1🕒0.87“ different”“⏎”“ differently”
7. L13N8922+1🕒0.87“ different”“ multiple”“ specifically”
8. L14N5388-1💤0.86“ different”“ differently”“ specific”
9. L12N6226-1🕒0.85“ specific”“ different”“ differently”
10. L13N5469-1🕒0.85“ specific”“ additionally”“ particular”

Shadow specimen, apart from the ten: L13N6266+1💥, 0.17.

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 13, neuron 6266, 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 0.66) 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
L13N6266+1💥 shadow specimen
t0-v0.1
6.6890.127.0543.63 “?:”“ represents”“ careful”“ describing”“ -:”“ describes”“ denotes”“ implies”
L13N6266-1
t0-v0.1
0.7330.660.9871.27 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.