Residual stream superposition can be real yet unimportant if neurons are monofunctional
burny_tech · x · 2026-10-19
Responding to Neel Nanda's takes on superposition, banburismus argues it's easy for residual stream superposition to exist while neurons remain essentially monofunctional—which is how he reads the recent results. In that case residual stream superposition is real but not particularly important: once neuron functions are well understood, everything can be read off directly. He flags ignoring attention as a huge oversimplification; with a similar understanding of attention, residual superposition would matter only via accidental crosstalk between neurons and attention heads.
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