eh2022-path-patching-edge-intervention
IN premise — summaries/2026/08/24/elhage-2022-toy-models-superposition-chunk-1.md
Created 2026-08-25T02:57:58+00:00
Path patching replaces the message sent from node u to node v along a computation-graph edge with the message produced on a different (reference) input to test whether that edge is causally necessary
Summary
Path patching is a diagnostic trick: you swap out the signal traveling along one specific connection in a computation graph with a known reference signal, and see whether the final output changes. This tells the system whether that particular connection is doing real causal work or is just along for the ride, which matters for understanding which parts of a process actually drive its results.