It’s undesirable because it makes SAEs more confusing / harder to use but it’s also a concrete obstacle to things like sparse feature circuits. For example, it causes automatic circuits composed of features to have issues. Instead of having a “starts with E” feature in a spelling circuit that fires on all “E” words, you have a “starts with E feature” that fires on most words (part of the circuit) + all the “E” absorbing features like “fires on the token Europe” (large number of features, adds lots of nodes to the circuit). So instead of being able to create a simple DAG, you get a complex one.
It’s undesirable because it makes SAEs more confusing / harder to use but it’s also a concrete obstacle to things like sparse feature circuits. For example, it causes automatic circuits composed of features to have issues. Instead of having a “starts with E” feature in a spelling circuit that fires on all “E” words, you have a “starts with E feature” that fires on most words (part of the circuit) + all the “E” absorbing features like “fires on the token Europe” (large number of features, adds lots of nodes to the circuit). So instead of being able to create a simple DAG, you get a complex one.
That makes sense, thanks!