tsne-2d-projection-loses-higher-dim-structure
IN premise — summaries/2026/08/24/wiki-Latent_space.md
Created 2026-08-24T17:11:18+00:00
t-SNE visualization projects latent/embedding space to 2D for human inspection but does not faithfully preserve all higher-dimensional relationships, making 2D plots unreliable for interpreting true embedding geometry
Summary
When t-SNE squashes a high-dimensional embedding into a 2D plot, it produces a distorted snapshot where apparent distances and groupings do not reliably reflect the true relationships in the original space. This means any decision or conclusion based on what looks clustered or separated in the plot is at risk of being wrong, and the visualization should be treated as a rough guide rather than ground truth.