second review round: tempered claims, robust statistics, corrected technical statements

Analyses (figures/stats_llm_epistasis.py, committed + reproducible):
condition-clustered bootstrap CIs (functional measures exclude zero:
dis_raw [+0.04,+0.69], conf-weighted [+0.02,+0.68]; gradient alignment
[-0.59,-0.06]; geometry straddles zero), PAIRED predictor contrasts (not
individually significant — stated), leave-one-condition-out held-out
prediction (functional replicates, geometry ~0, performance baseline
unstable), three outcome references (ordering sensitive to reference —
reported, with the mechanism), between/within-axis decomposition
(within-conflict identification impossible by design; the compat axis
identifies), and seed-level paired reliability (routing/directed beat
soup 3/3 seeds incl. one catastrophic soup failure; CI-width fragility
claim withdrawn).

Renames and corrections: "decisive experiment" -> "controlled predictive
test"; "operational epistasis" -> "confidence-weighted functional
conflict (proposed proxy)"; "functional by construction" -> "controls a
major source of coordinate mismatch / conflict-associated" (module,
configs, READMEs, figures); SI proposition's "chord" defined precisely
(endpoint-loss interpolation, invariant) vs the path (not invariant) +
no-global-optimality caveat (removable = lower bound, residual = upper);
snowball count != performance cliff distinction added; claims table
gains four rows (grid finding / weighting NOT supported / functional-vs-
all-geometry not established / operator choice open); §1 ladder states
the prediction rung as a bounded small-model result.

paper/response-to-review-2.md: point-by-point, opening with the
bookkeeping correction (E13b/c were in the reviewed draft — revised
interpretation, not new results). READMEs rewritten around the four
analyses with the chronology (prospective/adaptive/post-hoc) disclosed.
151 tests green.

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 17:55:46 +01:00
parent 1ae950cb7c
commit a40ace1821
17 changed files with 418 additions and 95 deletions

View file

@ -1,4 +1,4 @@
"""The decisive experiment: does an operational EPISTASIS measure predict merge success PRE-merge?
"""A controlled predictive test: does a pre-merge FUNCTIONAL-CONFLICT measure predict merge damage?
The external review's bar (2026-08-11): population-genetic quantities must *predict*, not re-describe —
forecast merge success **before merging**, and beat existing predictors. This module builds a grid of
@ -11,7 +11,9 @@ The theory-derived predictor — and its built-in ablation. A raw functional-dis
two parents is, by our own theory, the WRONG measure: disjoint specialists disagree hugely (one knows,
one is ignorant) yet merge perfectly harmless *complementation*. The DobzhanskyMuller analogue is
**bilateral confident contradiction**: both parents confidently produce different answers to the same
input. So the operational epistasis measure is confidence-weighted disagreement,
input. So the framework-motivated measure is **confidence-weighted functional conflict** a proposed proxy
for merge-relevant interactions (bilateral confident contradiction measures incompatible endpoint
behaviour, not non-additive interaction effects in the strict biological sense):
epi_conf = E_probe[ conf_A · conf_B · 1(ans_A != ans_B) ], conf = exp(mean token logprob),

View file

@ -1,8 +1,11 @@
"""LLM-tier model speciation (E13 in language-model weights) — the conflict cliff + the duration null.
The real-LLM image of E13, with a structural bonus: LoRA deltas live in the frozen base's coordinate
system, so there is **no permutation/rescaling ambiguity by construction** any merge failure here is
*functional* incompatibility, the residual isolated architecturally (no alignment step needed).
The real-LLM image of E13, with a structural advantage: LoRA deltas live in the frozen base's
coordinate system, which controls a major source of coordinate mismatch (no alignment step needed) and
so allows a cleaner test of conflict-associated merge failure. Note the honest boundary: a failure of
delta-averaging can still reflect nonlinear interaction, scaling, or capacity shared coordinates
remove the permutation explanation, they do not make every failure evidence of incompatible functional
requirements.
Two knobs, mirroring the MLP experiment: