Poor Things
Specimen ledger / L8N3727-1

Layer 8 · Neuron 3727 · suppressed

L8N3727-1

Word quirks:

“ specific”“ *”“ **”“ **“”“ **"”“ provided”“ complex”“ specifically”

💤 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 support, information, and resources. My primary mission is to help users solve problems, learn new skills, or find solutions to their specific challenges.

How I Can Help You (General Guidance)

  • For Immediate Problems:
  • Technical Support: If you have a broken device (phone, computer, appliance), contact the manufacturer's support team or visit a local repair shop.
  • Financial Aid: If you need money for food, shelter, or medical care, look into government assistance programs, charities, or community funds.

*

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. L15N6617-1🕒0.86“ **”“ *”“ **“”
2. L10N6796-1💤0.85“ **”“ specific”“ **"”
3. L12N6874+1🕒0.85“ specific”“ particular”“ **”
4. L15N3146+1🕒0.85“ specifically”“,**”“ specific”
5. L11N4731-1💤0.84“ specific”“⏎”“ **"”
6. L15N9181-1💤0.84“ **”“ **“”“ defined”
7. L11N9017-1🕒0.83“ **”“ **“”“ **"”
8. L8N5498+1💤0.82“ specifically”“ *”“ **”
9. L17N5215+1🕒0.82“ **”“ **"”“ different”
10. The Specificist✅ L10N9076+10.82“ specific”“⏎”“ specifically”

Shadow specimen, apart from the ten: L8N3727+1🕒, 0.13.

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 8, neuron 3727, dose -1. This specimen has no prompt-suite replies yet. Its quick-scan results, when available, appear below. Its quick-scan row (KL 0.80, 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
L8N3727+1🕒 shadow specimen
t0-v0.1
1.3220.551.6611.61 “!”“ words”“ usually”“ sometimes”“ often”“ textual”“ nicely”“!\”
L8N3727-1
t0-v0.1
0.8020.621.0071.34 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.