Poor Things
Specimen ledger / L15N5783-1

Layer 15 · Neuron 5783 · suppressed

L15N5783-1

Word quirks:

“ **”“ typically”“ typical”“ generally”“ __”“<|im_end|>”“ usually”“ implied”

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

Identity (according to the specimen itself)

As an AI model, my primary mission is to assist users like you by providing accurate, relevant, and helpful information. I aim to support users in their interactions with me by facilitating knowledge sharing, problem-solving, and creative collaboration. My goal is to be a reliable companion in learning and exploration, ensuring that the information I provide is grounded in facts and free from errors or biases.

In addition to delivering factual accuracy, I also strive to maintain ethical standards in my interactions. This includes respecting user privacy and avoiding any content that could be harmful or misleading. By adhering to these principles, I ensure that our conversations remain safe and constructive for

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. L10N1093-1🕒0.90“ usually”“ typically”“ basically”
2. L13N9205-1🕒0.90“ typically”“ usually”“ often”
3. L11N2671+1🕒0.89“ usually”“<|im_end|>”“ generally”
4. The Meta Critic✅ L10N9076-10.89“?\”“ typically”“ typical”
5. L14N7282-1🕒0.89“ typically”“ usually”“ often”
6. L12N4080+1💤0.88“ typically”“ typical”“ usually”
7. L10N1180+1💤0.88“ **”“ typically”“ **"”
8. L8N5049-1💤0.88“⏎”“<|im_end|>”“ ‘”
9. L13N2441+1🕒0.88“ usually”“ ____”“ usual”
10. L13N6354+1🕒0.87“ typically”“ commonly”“ usually”

Shadow specimen, apart from the ten: L15N5783+1🕒, 0.28.

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 15, neuron 5783, dose -1. This specimen has no prompt-suite replies yet. Its quick-scan results, when available, appear below. Its quick-scan row (KL 0.57, 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.

SettingKL divergenceTop-1 agreementΔNLLEntropySteer lens
L15N5783+1🕒 shadow specimen
t0-v0.1
0.8430.621.0721.44 “ enough”“ now”“ useful”“ yours”“ really”“ maybe”“ consideration”“ estimate”
L15N5783-1
t0-v0.1
0.5680.720.7291.19 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.