Poor Things
Specimen ledger / L7N265+1

Layer 7 · Neuron 265 · boosted

L7N265+1

Word quirks:

“ specifically”“ specific”“ exact”“ generating”“ executing”“ generation”“ execution”“ specifics”

💤 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 a large-scale language model trained to assist with writing and editing tasks. My primary function is to generate high-quality text based on user instructions or context.

Specifically, I can:

  • Draft professional emails (e.g., formal complaints, job applications).
  • Write marketing copy (e.g., product descriptions, press releases).
  • Summarize documents while adjusting the tone (e.g., turning technical jargon into plain English).
  • Translate content between different languages.
  • Generate creative content for specific audiences (e.g., social media

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. L7N5835-1💤0.82“ specific”“ specifically”“ response”
2. L9N5487+1💤0.77“ specific”“ unspecified”“ execution”
3. L11N8464-1💤0.76“ specific”“ generated”“ generation”
4. L6N2995-1💤0.76“⏎”“ execution”“ executing”
5. L8N1006+1💤0.76“ specific”“ specifics”“ typical”
6. L7N2196+1💤0.75“ process”“ generating”“ processing”
7. L6N4083-1💤0.75“ usually”“ generating”“ specific”
8. L9N3003-1💤0.75“ defining”“ referenced”“ identifying”
9. L19N8887+1💤0.75“ specific”“ Specific”“ specifically”
10. L13N7776-1🕒0.74“⏎”“ appropriate”“<|im_end|>”

Shadow specimen, apart from the ten: L7N265-1💤, -0.18.

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 7, neuron 265, dose +1. This specimen has no prompt-suite replies yet. Its quick-scan results, when available, appear below. Its quick-scan row (KL 0.63, 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
L7N265+1
t0-v0.1
0.6310.720.7541.25 Top boosted tokens ↑
L7N265-1💤 shadow specimen
t0-v0.1
0.7720.660.9791.30 “⏎”“<|im_end|>”“⏎⏎”“⏎ ⏎”“ ⏎”“ ____”“\n”“ ______”

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.