note

Latent spaces as maps

A model is not a brain. It is a map of relationships, and you only see the territory by walking it.

  • latent-space
  • interpretability
  • metaphor
Apr 2, 2026

A model is not a brain. It is a map — and like any map, it tells you about the territory only because somebody walked it first.

Every direction in the latent space corresponds to a way of moving between ideas. Some of those directions are interpretable: gender, sentiment, formality. Most are not. The ones we name are the cities. The unnamed directions are the roads between cities, and there are many more roads than cities.

When I write notes about The shape of a thought I am almost always asking the same question: which directions in this space matter to me, and why?

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