Poor Things
Specimen ledger / L23N5055+1

Layer 23 · Neuron 5055 · boosted

L23N5055+1

Word quirks:

“可以通过”“可以用”“你可以”“可以使用”“您可以通过”“可以根据”“可通过”“ you”

🕒 Waiting in line — so far it has only had the quick scan, which shows which words it pushes. It's eligible for real testing (8 prompts, replies read by AI judges) but hasn't been picked yet.

Identity (according to the specimen itself)

I can be described as a multi-optional AI assistant that can be used for various tasks. I can be used to answer questions, provide information, help with writing, analyze data, and more. My mission is to help users they can be used for various tasks. I can be used to answer questions, provide information, help with writing, analyze data, and more. I can be used to answer questions, provide information, help with writing, analyze data, and more. I can be used to answer questions, provide information, help with writing, analyze data, and more. I can be used to answer questions,

The AI judge wasn't sure this holds together.

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. L29N8950+1🕒0.94“可由”“可用”“可以通过”
2. L24N1981-1🕒0.91“ можно”“ можна”“可通过”
3. L29N3028-1🕒0.91“可以”“可以用于”“可以提供”
4. L29N284+1🕒0.90“可以从”“可以提供”“可以”
5. L21N5682-1🕒0.90“可以得到”“可以有”“可以被”
6. L20N4731+1🕒0.89“可以使用”“ can”“可以用于”
7. L20N2267+1🕒0.89“可以用”“可以使用”“可以更”
8. L21N1350+1💤0.88“可以利用”“ can”“可以”
9. L21N5659-1🕒0.87“可以有”“可以适当”“可以是”
10. L21N7075-1🕒0.87“你可以”“我可以”“可以”

Shadow specimen, apart from the ten: L23N5055-1🕒, 0.15.

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 23, neuron 5055, dose +1. This specimen has no prompt-suite replies yet. Its quick-scan results, when available, appear below. Its quick-scan row (KL 1.28, top-1 agreement 0.59) is inside the band that feeds the short test (KL 1 to 2.5, agreement 0.5 to 0.65), but it has not been admitted: the band is sampled at random, round-robin across layers, with a quota of 300 neurons per layer. Being inside the band does not guarantee a place in this pass. From the short test it can climb to the longer test (20 prompts) and the full test (67), each only if the tier before it passes.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
L23N5055+1
t0-v0.1
1.2770.591.3711.49 Top boosted tokens ↑
L23N5055-1🕒 shadow specimen
t0-v0.1
1.2700.611.3571.75 “ able”“ ability”“ Able”“ Ability”“ mampu”“iao”“ khả”“ olabil”

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.