epistasis_predicts: functional conflict, not weight geometry, predicts merge failure pre-merge

The decisive experiment from the external review. 39 LoRA parent pairs
(0.5B, 3 seeds) on three axes decorrelated by construction: conflict
(contradictory conventions on shared prompts, private budgets fixed),
compat (same prompts, SAME convention — overlap without conflict), and
duration (weight divergence, zero conflict). Six pre-merge predictors;
primary outcome = merge penalty (parent potential − merged achieved).

League table (Spearman vs penalty, n=39): functional measures predict
(dis_raw +0.460, epi_conf +0.446, p<0.005); geometry collapses
(delta_cos +0.03, delta_l2 +0.17 n.s.); gradient alignment weak (−0.35);
performance ~0. The first grid's apparent geometry win (+0.60) was an
overlap/volume artifact — the compat control axis (added for exactly
this) exposed and killed it: same overlap and data volume, zero penalty.
Honest riders in the README: confidence weighting does not beat raw
disagreement as a rank predictor (pre-registered internal prediction not
confirmed; it does double the conflict/compat level contrast), and
|rho|~0.45 is bounded by 0.5B merge-outcome noise (7B is the firm-up).

Also: micro-batched gradient accumulation (OOM fix on the shared 16GB
GPU), exact r-space LoRA-delta geometry (brute-force-verified test,
151 green), systemd-run runbook lesson (tmux dies with the SSH session
scope on this box).

Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01BkRLcc18rwT2Lysu6PbG7v
This commit is contained in:
Giorgio Gilestro 2026-09-06 17:19:46 +01:00
parent 5a23ddaf2a
commit 287d2326cc
16 changed files with 622 additions and 3 deletions

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@ -13,3 +13,9 @@ is about (output-mean vs weight-average vs max-with-oracle vs routing are differ
different budgets); (4) don't write "nobody has / none imports" — invite no priority disputes; say
"to our knowledge" and state the positive contribution; (5) negative results (E13b) are strengths —
lead with them; (6) "control theory" needs states/controls/dynamics/rule or it's a "framework".
**2026-08-11 — tmux does NOT survive SSH disconnects on this machine.** The tmux server starts inside
the SSH session's systemd scope and gets reaped on logout (lost ~20 min of the epistasis grid; GG:
"SSH disconnected"). Reliable pattern here: `systemd-run --user --collect --unit=<name>
--working-directory="$PWD" bash -c '<cmd>'` — lands in user@.service (kept alive by the desktop
session), survives disconnects; check with `systemctl --user is-active <name>`, logs via redirect.