Poor Things
Specimen ledger / L8N6330+1

Layer 8 · Neuron 6330 · boosted

L8N6330+1

Word quirks:

“⏎”“ ‘”“ \"”“ “”“ ⏎”“ ””“ ⏎”“ ‘’”

💤 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 Qwen3.5, a large language model designed to provide comprehensive, accurate, and up-to-date information on a wide range of topics. My mission is to empower users with reliable knowledge, foster innovation, and support the development of technologies that benefit humanity. I strive to be a helpful resource for those seeking clarity, insight, and actionable solutions to complex challenges.

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. L7N5158-1💤0.99“ ‘”“ ⏎”“ ””
2. L9N213-1🕒0.99“ ‘’”“ \"”“⏎”
3. L15N8269-1🕒0.98“ ‘”“ “”“ \"”
4. L8N5420-1💤0.98“ ‘”“ ‘’”“ ⏎”
5. L3N8274-1💤0.98“ ‘”“⏎”“‘”
6. L11N6248+1💤0.98“⏎”“ ⏎”“ ‘”
7. L13N1206+1💤0.98“⏎”“ ⏎”“ ‘”
8. L8N4554+1💤0.98“ ‘”“ ⏎”“⏎”
9. L5N69-1💤0.98“ ‘”“⏎”“ “”
10. L17N1338+1💤0.97“ ‘”“ ⏎”“ “”

Shadow specimen, apart from the ten: L8N6330-1💥, -0.25.

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 6330, dose +1. This specimen has no prompt-suite replies yet. Its quick-scan results, when available, appear below. Its quick-scan row (KL 0.84, top-1 agreement 0.66) 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
L8N6330+1
t0-v0.1
0.8430.661.0171.36 Top boosted tokens ↑
L8N6330-1💥 shadow specimen
t0-v0.1
3.7660.294.1632.27 “ similarities”“ nicer”“ resolution”“ resolutions”“ wanting”“ particular”“ smoother”“ interest”

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.