Manuscript revision and pending experiment work, snapshot before restructuring

Clarity pass over the main text (36-item audit), Discussion rewrite and cut,
acknowledgements, Souly et al. as ref 62, lettered SI panels, model section
moved under Results; plus the untracked curriculum/society/compose/smol
configs, runners, figures, stats and tests that the SI already cites.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5.1 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01Y64o8FKP7rCuXzC48pxpMm

CLAUDE.md

@@ -99,6 +99,10 @@ E4's whole purpose is to isolate the effect of teacher **decorrelation ρ**, so
 
 **Finding (2026-07-05, HARD benchmark `llm_moe_hard_hpc` + `llm_directed_hard_hpc` — the 7B "fusion wins / no headroom" results were SATURATION artefacts; the law is HEADROOM, not base-size).** The easy families saturated 7B (strings & arith at 1.00), so the 7B nulls (moe: fusion 0.87 > union 0.84; directed ≈ soup) couldn't separate "refinements don't help at scale" from "tasks too easy." Built a **hard task variant** (`hard: true` in `tasks.py`: multi-step lists, Caesar ciphers / letter transforms, multi-step & larger arithmetic — same family labels & answer formats, threaded through `make_tasks`/`train_specialist`/runners; hard specialists cache separately as `spec_*_hard`) and re-ran both at 7B on Imperial CX3 (one L40S, 24 min, unsaturated: arith ≈0.48, strings 0.67, lists 0.34). **Both nulls flip back to the 0.5B ordering:** (1) **union beats fusion again — routing 0.500 > fusion 0.40** (soup 0.392/ties 0.400), the *same* 10-pt margin as 0.5B; fusion dilutes the fragile strings-specialist so hard (0.665 → soup 0.300) that soup even **trails the best single specialist** (0.425), while routing keeps it (0.670). (2) **directed selection beats soup again — 0.492 > 0.392** (+10 pts), recovering most of routing's benefit from one deployable merged model (lifts strings back to 0.630). **Correction to the earlier interpretation:** the `llm_moe_hpc` "regime flip" (fusion wins at 7B) and `llm_directed_hpc` "no headroom" were both driven by **task saturation, not base capability**. The operative variable is **headroom**: "merge, don't average" (union > fusion) and "directed sex" (selection > single blend) hold whenever there's room to lose to dilution — weak base (0.5B) *or* hard tasks at a strong base (7B-hard); fusion only wins in the degenerate corner where easy tasks let a strong base compose to the 1.00 ceiling. This vindicates E8's `max > mean` in real 7B weights once saturation is controlled. `configs/llm/{moe_hard,moe_hard_hpc,directed_hard_hpc}.yaml`, `hpc/llm_hard.pbs`, `results/llm_{moe,directed}_hard_hpc/`, +1 hard-task test (131 green).
 
+**Finding (2026-09-11, three controls from the manuscript review; `results/llm_curriculum_v5_{stop3,decor}/`, `results/llm_*_hpc/s{1,2,3}/`).** (1) **Forced stop** (`merge_until: 3`): obligate merging through generation 2 then none finishes 0.793 vs the declinable merge's 0.792 (per seed −0.008/−0.006/+0.011) — the veto's outcome is explained by *when* it stopped. (2) **Decorrelated curriculum** (`orders:` key; complementarity 0.00→0.70→0.00 instead of the Latin square's monotone fall): declines still rise with generation (0.44→0.89); pooled partial ρ(declined, complementarity | generation) = −0.07, CI (−0.21, +0.09), partial ρ with generation +0.31. **The recombination-modifier / reduction-principle reading of Fig. 4B is withdrawn**; the Latin-square ρ = −0.57 was carried by generation (adapter age, skill count and destroyer arrival are confounded). What stands: one bit of selection per merge, or a fixed early stop, avoids the obligate-merge collapse at no cost against never merging. (3) **7B seeds 2–3** (33 min/seed, L40S): merge − best specialist +0.066±0.036, routing − soup +0.094±0.015, directed − soup +0.073±0.031, all 3/3 seeds; *not* replicated: "soup below the best specialist on hard tasks" (1/3, mean +0.001) — softened in text. Stats: `figures/stats_llm_curriculum.py` (also the single source of curriculum arm labels, used by `make_figs`), `figures/stats_llm_7b_seeds.py`; `_figlib.load_seed_bundles` reads `s{seed}/` layouts.
+
+**Finding (2026-09-12, four experiments from the dropped "Limits"; `results/llm_speciation/s{1,2,3}`, `results/llm_curriculum_v5_{early,late,early_obl,late_obl,cull}/s{1,2,3}`, `results/llm_{merge_seeds,moe_hard_seeds}_smol`).** GG's rule: a limitation that names a runnable experiment is run, not stated. (1) **Speciation seeds 2–3:** conflict cliff (merge 0.02/0.12/0.16 vs parents 0.23–0.25) and duration null (0.76→0.95) hold in 3/3 seeds; seed 1's cliff was the deepest. Fig. 5C–D now has CI bands. (2) **Conflict-arrival curricula** (`orders:`; boolq/winogrande in generations 1–2 or 5–6, age and skill count rising identically): declines and the obligate collapse follow **generation, not conflict arrival** (partial ρ with conflict-present, generation controlled: −0.09, CI (−0.45, 0.15); with generation: +0.45); conflict-early dips at arrival, recovers, collapses from generation 5; conflict-late collapses from generation 4 with its pair still to come. What stays confounded is adapter age with skill count. (3) **Second base lineage** (SmolLM2-1.7B-Instruct, `adapters_dir: models/llm_smol` because the specialist cache is keyed by family+seed only): Fisher–Muller replicates 5/5 (soup +0.049±0.022, TIES +0.097±0.020 over best specialist), headroom 3/3 with a larger margin (routing − soup +0.162±0.036; soup below best specialist in 3/3). (4) **Differential reproduction** (`cull: true`, `cull_step`/`inherit_slot`): **parity again** — with selection, declinable 0.793 vs never-merge 0.804 (−0.011±0.003, 3/3 below); selection − none +0.007±0.030; recombination's early lead present with and without selection, gone by generation 5. The Discussion's prediction (selection turns speed into level) is withdrawn: under a curriculum that delivers every skill to every lineage the ceiling is what one adapter carries. Speciation adapters now live in `speciation_s{seed}/` (an array over seeds used to race on a shared dir). SI Figs. S14–S16; stats in `figures/stats_llm_{curriculum,speciation_seeds,smol}.py`.
+
 ## Build order (blueprint §7) — respect the gate
 
 1. Scaffold: repo layout (§5), container, pytest skeleton, config system, seeding utils. `make test` green.