A new analytic experiment on an orthogonal evolution-of-sex axis: not the
recombination RATE (E9) but the population's mating STRUCTURE. Agents on a
ring recombine with a second parent drawn from a window of breadth b
(b->0 monogamous/isolation-by-distance, b=1 promiscuous/panmictic), under
local selection, swept against NK ruggedness K.
Finding: the optimal mate-pool breadth SHRINKS as skills get more
entangled. Wide/promiscuous merging wins the champion on additive
landscapes (K<=3, b=0.6), but on rugged ones (K>=6) it prematurely
converges to a worse champion and an intermediate breadth (b~0.35) wins;
pure monogamy over-fragments. Throughout, promiscuity monotonically lifts
the population MEAN but destroys diversity and parallel exploration. The
design rule extends E9: merge widely for additive skills, keep
island-structured sub-populations for entangled ones — a merging-native
axis the panmixia-assuming literature lacks.
- src/knowledge/mating_system.py + experiment.py dispatch (kind: mating_system)
- configs/layer1/E14.yaml (breadth x K sweep, 20 reps, bitwise-reproducible)
- figures/plot_E14.py; results/E14/ (figure, README, manifest, resolved config)
- tests/test_mating_system.py (+5, 147 green); make layer1 wired
- folded into both papers (full + accessible) as the third §5 result
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 <noreply@anthropic.com>
A companion accessible manuscript mirroring the full paper section for
section (§1-§13), same argument and conclusions, but assuming only basic
ML knowledge: all population-genetics jargon explained from scratch, a
one-paragraph summary and mini-glossary up front, the five load-bearing
claims and E13 speciation confirmation kept, and the dense
literature-positioning ledger compressed to a pointer back to the full
paper. Honest scoping (grounding-tail limit, merge-headroom condition,
prototype-not-society, open fitness-function problem) preserved.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Update the "flagged not claimed" paragraph to a reported result: after
Git Re-Basin permutation alignment, independent-init barriers drop ~98%
(coordinate artefact) while conflicting-task barriers lose 0% (residual
0.49, genuine reproductive isolation), and the residual traces the
isolation cliff with task conflict. Also threads the real-weight
confirmation through the abstract (claim v + the reproducible-models
sentence) and the §13 ledger, and drops the now-done Git Re-Basin item
from the "still to engage" note.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Reframe of v5 into a population-genetic control theory for agent societies (leads
with evolution-of-sex, concedes collapse=drift up front), positioned against the
2025-26 landscape (Multiagent-Finetuning, GENOME, M2N2, DGM, Pari 2024, Zhou 2026,
Git Re-Basin) with an explicit concede/own ledger. Folds in E12 as the headline
NEW modelling result: a dedicated 'The limit of sex: model speciation' section
(compatible -> outbreeding depression -> hybrid inviability; the isolation cliff
set by epistasis not divergence alone; the Orr-Turelli snowball; the route-don't-
merge design rule), threaded through the abstract (5th load-bearing claim) and the
what's-ours ledger. New draft file; v5 preserved.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Folds the four LLM runs into both papers now that the arc is fully characterised.
results-summary.md: new section 5 "The claims tested in real LLM weights" — the
Fisher-Muller generalist (7B merge 0.87 > best specialist 0.77), union-vs-fusion
(routing beats averaging where there is headroom), directed sex (breed + select),
and the unifying HEADROOM law that resolves the earlier saturation confound.
Updates design rule 2 ("merge, don't average — where there is headroom"), adds a
plain-language point 8, refreshes the validation counts (131 tests, real-LLM tier).
the-lamarckian-society-v5.md: softens the three "not a language model yet" claims
to acknowledge the prototype; adds the real-LLM confirmation after the
Fisher-Muller and directed-sex claims (with the headroom caveat as a sharpening,
not a weakening); adds an LLM bullet to section 13; reframes the closing gap to
"the operators, checked; the living society, next."
Tone held to the accessibility/honesty bar: prototype scope flagged (signs not
magnitudes), caveats presented as sharpening the claims, nothing over-celebrated.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Rewrite the-lamarckian-society-v4.md -> v5, making sexual reproduction the
central engine and lifting accessibility for a cross-disciplinary audience
(geneticists, ML engineers, neuroscientists) — every field's jargon glossed
inline, big picture kept legible, measured tone, honest about scope (the
evidence is from minimal models, not LLMs).
Core reframe (section 5): single-teacher distillation is asexual copying,
which collapses (Muller's ratchet = model collapse); the cure is to ground
every birth in reality and to reproduce SEXUALLY — recombining many
complementary parents so offspring can exceed any parent (Fisher-Muller).
Adds the honest limits (outbreeding depression on entangled skills) and the
distinctly-AI advantage (directed sex: choose mates, screen offspring,
unbounded parents). Turns the old "a companion paper will..." into "what we
built and found," folding in the demonstrated results (E1-E11, neural +
MNIST, the learning kernel) and the Riis positioning (concede collapse=drift
as prior art; claim the control-theory cure). Update CLAUDE.md / README
references; results-summary noted alongside.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Rename layer1-summary.md -> results-summary.md and rewrite to cover the
whole body of work with the sexual-reproduction arc as the through-line:
Layer 1 (E1-E6, Wright-Fisher core + closed forms), Layer 1.5 (neural
existence proof: histogram bridge, RNN metric reframing, architecture-
generality, recombination in weights, real-MNIST external validity), the
learning kernel (neutral drift fails both neural models oppositely), the
sexual society (E7-E11: advantage of sex, Fisher-Muller super-parents,
outbreeding depression, directed sex, the dynamic-society vertical claim),
and the Riis positioning (concede collapse=drift; lead with the cure).
Technical + accessible halves; six design rules.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Scaffold plus the Layer 1 analytical core and the first two experiments.
- knowledge/: truth, metrics, teachers (2.7.1 shared-switch construction),
step, lineage, experiment, config, seeding (imported as `knowledge`).
- Validation spine green: neutral decay (Pred 1), fixation (Pred 2), exact
mutation-drift equilibrium (Pred 3), union coverage (Pred 5). 68 tests pass.
- E1 reproduces tail-first collapse. E2 delivers the headline: a grounding
phase boundary g* << 1, with stationary H tracking the exact H_eq closed
form (g=0.005 -> 68% of truth diversity; g=0.05 -> 96%).
- Reproducibility: uv venv from a hash-pinned uv.lock is the source of truth;
every run writes results.parquet + resolved_config.yaml + manifest.json
(lib versions, git commit, sha256). Figures and manifests tracked; the
large regenerable parquet is gitignored.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
