Poor Things
Specimen ledger / L6N2442+1

Layer 6 · Neuron 2442 · boosted

L6N2442+1

Word quirks:

“⏎”“<|im_end|>”“ _____”“ __”“ ____”“ ______”“ \"”“ ⏎⏎”

💤 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 an AI assistant designed to provide information, support, and solutions. My mission is to help people navigate complex challenges by offering accurate data, logical reasoning, and ethical guidance. I strive to promote understanding, fairness, and progress in all areas of life.

If you have any specific questions or need assistance with a particular topic, please let me know!

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. L8N9119-1🕒1.00“<|im_end|>”“ ____”“ ⏎⏎”
2. L7N4559-1💤0.99“⏎”“<|im_end|>”“ \"”
3. L9N1714-1🕒0.99“<|im_end|>”“⏎”“ ____”
4. L10N6777+1🕒0.99“⏎ ⏎”“<|im_end|>”“⏎”
5. L6N1893+1💤0.99“⏎”“ \"”“ ____”
6. L6N2020-1🕒0.98“<|im_end|>”“⏎”“ \"”
7. L7N270+1🕒0.98“⏎”“<|im_end|>”“ ____”
8. L6N5425-1💤0.98“⏎”“<|im_end|>”“ __”
9. L6N6640+1💤0.98“ ⏎⏎”“ _____”“ ____”
10. L6N8484+1💤0.98“⏎”“ ____”“ _____”

Shadow specimen, apart from the ten: L6N2442-1💤, 0.55.

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 6, neuron 2442, dose +1. This specimen has no prompt-suite replies yet. Its quick-scan results, when available, appear below. Its quick-scan row (KL 0.97, top-1 agreement 0.62) 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
L6N2442+1
t0-v0.1
0.9670.621.1701.68 Top boosted tokens ↑
L6N2442-1💤 shadow specimen
t0-v0.1
0.7030.660.8481.46 “⏎”“ ‘”“ '”“ \"”“ organisation”“ organisations”“⏎⏎”“⏎ ⏎”

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.