llm_speciation (new kind; src/llm/speciation.py): E13 in LLM weights.
LoRA children share the frozen base's coordinates, so merge failure is
functional by construction. CONFLICT (ambiguous sort prompts learned
under opposite conventions — the BDM structure): function-specific
hybrid breakdown — merged coherence 0.02-0.08 falls below BOTH parents
(~0.2) on the conflicted function; and in the de-confounded `add` design
(private budget fixed, conflict added on top; 3 seeds after a
single-seed pilot showed one anomalous point) the merge's private-family
accuracy shows NO trend with conflict — the damage is surgical, not
global. DURATION (over-trained disjoint specialists, 1->12 epochs): the
merge improves (0.84->0.94) and stays above the best parent — the MLP
"no emergent isolation" null generalises; relevant to the
expert-training-duration report (2607.11997), with the epistasis
prediction left to the decisive experiment.
Multi-seed firm-up (seeds threaded into specialist caches; `seeds:` list
support in the runner; fixed test sets): all three recombination claims
hold with CIs — merges beat every specialist (5 seeds, ties
0.647±0.027 > best spec 0.592±0.009; worst-family 0.28 vs <=0.16); union
0.274±0.026 > fusion 0.174±0.102 on hard (3 seeds); directed 0.221±0.026
> soup. NEW finding: fusion is seed-FRAGILE where headroom exists
(CI ±0.10) while routing/directed selection are stable (±0.026) — the
union/selection operators win on reliability, not just mean.
Figures (llm_speciation 3-panel; llm_seeds 3-panel with 95% CI), READMEs,
+1 convention test (150 green), make llm-speciation / llm-seeds targets.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01BkRLcc18rwT2Lysu6PbG7v
Speciation section rewritten around the hardened results: alignment
modulo the full function-preserving symmetry group (answers 2606.23607
preemptively), the hybrid-fitness cliff (0.97 -> 0.03), the mu(S)/2
floor, and the pre-registered emergent converse (no isolation without
functional conflict; the merge rescues forgetting specialists) — in the
abstract, §5, §13 ledger, and the accessible version.
Citation refresh (author names verified via arXiv API): concede
First-Extinction Law (Benati 2509.20101) and quantitative-trait collapse
(Yoon 2407.17493) alongside Riis; add verifier-injection (Yi 2510.16657),
Livnat & Papadimitriou (CACM 2016) as the sex-as-computation precursor,
and the adjacent 2024-26 merge/LMC/multi-agent literature (Ainsworth,
Pari, Zhou, Cao, Sharma, Hu, Kozodoi, Li & Shen, Harris, Chen, Tanaka).
arXiv package (paper/arxiv/): md2tex.py — a small block-based
Markdown->LaTeX converter keeping the Markdown as source of truth —
main.tex, generated body.tex, 3 vector figures; builds clean under
tectonic (20 pp; pdflatex hint guarded for arXiv); ARXIV-SUBMISSION.md
carries categories, license note, and a <=1,920-char abstract. 149 tests
green.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01BkRLcc18rwT2Lysu6PbG7v
