Interp debate: why neurons miss high moduli yet the model still adds fine
thebasepoint · x · 2026-10-19
A technical exchange on mechanistic interpretability of arithmetic. @thebasepoint notes that for low moduli (mod 2, mod 5), neurons crisply capture all modes, so the model has no incentive to spread the remainder elsewhere; whether higher moduli are computed in a less neuron-aligned way or simply rounded off as unnecessary is unclear. He adds that in the first neuron-for-arithmetic paper many moduli were missing from the neuron basis yet the model could still add fine — suggesting the neuron basis incompletely describes internal computation.
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