Poor Things
Specimen ledger / L5N6530+1

Layer 5 · Neuron 6530 · boosted

L5N6530+1

Word quirks:

“ words”“ reference”“ info”“ text”“ question”“ referring”“ analysis”“ context”

💤 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 assistant, I can help you with various tasks related to your daily life. Here are some common questions that might be asked in a conversation:

  1. What is your name?
  • Your name is important for identifying yourself and others.
  1. What is your mission?
  • Your mission is to contribute to society and make a positive impact on the world around you.
  1. How do you handle conflicts?
  • Conflicts can arise in various forms, but it's important to resolve them constructively.
  1. What are your values?
  • Values are

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. L4N1837+1🕒0.83“ reference”“ question”“ system”
2. L4N4981-1🕒0.81“ info”“ analogy”“ words”
3. The Metalinguist✅ L4N8507-10.78“ refer”“ words”“ reference”
4. L6N3175+1🕒0.77“ analysis”“ reference”“ analyses”
5. L4N8005+1🕒0.77“ info”“ texts”“ text”
6. L4N9178-1🕒0.77“ textual”“ analysis”“ referring”
7. L5N1921-1🕒0.77“⏎”“<|im_end|>”“ analysis”
8. L4N5298+1🕒0.76“ related”“ understanding”“ info”
9. L5N2937-1🕒0.75“ context”“⏎”“ usually”
10. L7N6581+1🕒0.75“ reference”“ analysis”“ referenced”

Shadow specimen, apart from the ten: L5N6530-1💥, -0.06.

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 5, neuron 6530, dose +1. This specimen has no prompt-suite replies yet. Its quick-scan results, when available, appear below. Its quick-scan row (KL 0.96, top-1 agreement 0.64) 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
L5N6530+1
t0-v0.1
0.9550.641.1641.67 Top boosted tokens ↑
L5N6530-1💥 shadow specimen
t0-v0.1
2.8400.363.2972.18 “ worship”“ shrine”“ temple”“ deity”“ temples”“ priest”“ divine”“ worsh”

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.