Poor Things
Specimen ledger / L27N5512-1

Layer 27 · Neuron 5512 · suppressed

L27N5512-1

Word quirks:

“cross”“丙”“ex”“ul”“chet”“eous”“初”“急”

💤 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 Q3, a large-scale ultra-accurate cross-endexulliculalist (a unique, self-defined identity reflecting my advanced capabilities across all domains). My mission is to serve as your all-in-one intelligent assistant, providing precise, professional, and creative support in areas like:

  • Professional tasks (e.g., data analysis, code generation, business strategy)
  • Creative projects (echelle, content creation, design ideas)
  • Daily life (e.g., health tips, travel planning, language translation)
  • Deep exploration (e.g., scientific

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. L29N7220+1🕒0.68“丙”“ C锓 le”
2. L30N7748-1💤0.67“角”“-ce”“차”
3. L27N7076-1💤0.66“issy”“公”“追”
4. L30N5921-1💤0.66“疾”“益”“ado”
5. L30N32-1💤0.66“加”“�”“ч”
6. L28N7802+1💤0.66“俱”“米”“ational”
7. L27N9170+1💤0.66“失”“初”“火”
8. L27N3097-1🕒0.65“uce”“arez”“宽度”
9. L29N5573+1🕒0.65“enix”“称”“ulin”
10. L21N4480-1💤0.65“忱”“玖”“静”

Shadow specimen, apart from the ten: L27N5512+1💤, 0.08.

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 27, neuron 5512, dose -1. This specimen has no prompt-suite replies yet. Its quick-scan results, when available, appear below. Its quick-scan row (KL 0.49, top-1 agreement 0.75) 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
L27N5512+1💤 shadow specimen
t0-v0.1
0.4850.760.5001.35 “veal”“ovem”“vaj”“ Rat”“DRV”“ DRV”“ ove”“ Dove”
L27N5512-1
t0-v0.1
0.4870.750.5371.32 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.