The real-weight image of E12, and the answer to the mode-connectivity reviewer.
Small no-BN MLPs on MNIST, forked from a shared base and trained independently,
are weight-averaged; we measure the linear-mode-connectivity barrier before and
after in-house deterministic Git Re-Basin permutation alignment (neural/rebasin.py,
scipy linear_sum_assignment), decomposing it into removable (coordinate artefact)
and residual (reproductive isolation). kind: speciation_real.
Result (3 reps):
- shared (same task, shared fork): no barrier — trivially mergeable.
- independent (same task, different init): naive 0.056, alignment removes 98%
(residual 0.001) — the incompatibility is a coordinate artefact.
- conflict (conflicting label maps): naive 0.496, alignment removes 0% (residual
0.496) — genuine reproductive isolation. Because alignment demonstrably works on
the independent case, the conflict residual is real, not a failure to align.
- Isolation cliff (speciation_real_cliff): residual rises 0.00->0.13->0.19->0.28->
0.40->0.49 with the fraction of conflicting classes — the real-weight mirror of
E12's cliff; residual==naive throughout (functional, not coordinate).
rebasin.py sanity-gated (recovers a known permutation exactly). plot_speciation_real.py
(2-panel), +4 pure-NumPy tests (142 green), README with honest positioning vs
Git Re-Basin / Entezari / Frankle / Pari 2024 / Zhou 2026. Wired into make mnist
(needs torchvision).
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Confirms model collapse and its arrest by grounding on REAL images, not
just the synthetic sandbox. A conv VAE (the canonical generative-collapse
model) is retrained each generation on its own generated digits, with a
fraction g of fresh real MNIST mixed in. Modes = digit class x stroke-
thickness bin (K=30, Zipf, ~18 tail modes); the oracle is a frozen CNN +
deterministic thickness at 98.5% mode accuracy (30x30 confusion matrix
recorded in the manifest as the measurement-noise floor).
Result (4 reps): dry (g=0) collapses to a single mode -- forward-KL
0.5->18, support 30->1, tail 1.0->0.06, H->0 -- while 10% grounding holds
all 30 modes (KL~0.6, full tail, H~0.9). Signs, not magnitudes (blueprint
3.5); the exact synthetic oracle stays the quantitative anchor. The VAE
needs ~10% grounding vs the synthetic histogram's ~5%, consistent with the
grounding finding that trained nets need more than the exact operator.
Plugs into the existing data-agnostic contract (metrics/grounding/output
reused verbatim): mnist_data (thickness bins, class x thickness bijection,
MnistSampler), mnist_oracle (ClassifierOracle + confusion matrix),
mnist_vae (ConvVAEGenerator), mnist_loop (run_mnist_lineage), kind=
mnist_lineage dispatch, MnistCfg/OracleCfg. Figures: plot_mnist (parquet-
only) + mnist_montage (eyeball diagnostic showing digits degenerate to one
blurry mode). make mnist / make env-mnist, kept out of the make neural
loop. 99 tests green (+5 torchvision-gated).
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Grounding refinement (18 reps): forward-KL is the operative neural
collapse metric, not H or tail-survival. The RNN's smoothing keeps
spurious tail modes alive, so tail_truth_mass_alive is flat/non-monotone
in g and H stays ~0.8 of H*; only forward-KL falls monotonically (dry
2.08 -> g=0.2: 0.75, paired t up to 3.3). The sharp g* << 1 is an
exact-operator feature carried by the histogram bridge (0.047); the
trained RNN confirms the SIGN and softens the sharpness (half the KL gap
closes by g~0.04, but full recovery needs g~0.19). Blueprint 3.5's
directional claim holds; the pre-registered 95%-of-H*/tail falsifier is
not met because those are the wrong metrics for a smoothing model.
Robustness: a fully-degenerate RNN can emit only invalid codewords, so
measure_distribution now returns a terminal-collapse sentinel (fixation
on the dominant mode) instead of crashing a long sweep. Edge test added
(94 tests green).
Figures: plot_{bridge,collapse,grounding,architectures,recombination}.py,
each a pure function of its committed bundle, wired into `make figures`
(glob plot_*.py minus plot_E[1-6]/_*). bridge sits on the exact H_eq
curve (g*=0.047); recombination shows max-merge rising while mean-distill
stays flat; architectures shows the collapse/rescue signs across
histogram/GRU/MLP.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 <noreply@anthropic.com>
src/neural/recombine.py mirrors Layer-1 run_coverage but trains K_T specialist RNNs on
assignments from the exact shared-switch retention construction (K_T/rho/q clean; union
matches the closed form), then recombines the measured teacher distributions two ways:
mean (naive pooling) vs oracle-guided max-merge (per-mode strongest teacher, M2N2-style),
each followed by size-n resampling.
Result (8 reps): at rho=0, union rises 0.49->0.96 (supply matches closed form); analytic
surviving_max rises 0.043->0.087 while surviving_mean stays flat ~0.045 — the conservation
law (averaging cancels the union gain, max-merge realises it). At rho=1 (identical
teachers) union and max are flat. The lesson holds in the neural setting; trained-weight
columns show the same signs but noisier (smoothing inflates baseline; deep tail barely
clears n=200 resampling). torch-gated test added. 93 tests green.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
configs/neural/{N0,N1,N2,N5}.yaml -> {bridge,collapse,grounding,architectures}.yaml,
results dirs likewise. Updated experiment/output.dir fields, comments/docstrings, and
docs; regenerated the four result manifests (now carrying the real git commit). No
functional path resolution referenced the codes (the Makefile globs configs/neural/*.yaml
and tests use inline configs), so nothing breaks. 92 tests green.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
