MachineSex/configs/layer1/E10.yaml
Giorgio Gilestro 48181a1c84 society: make the sexual-transmission model rigorous (E9 epistasis, E10 directed sex)
Deepen the sexual-reproduction frame before entering the full society, on
the two facets GG chose: landscape robustness and directed recombination.
Adds a Kauffman NK landscape (genotype.nk_fitness, tunable ruggedness),
finite n-parent crossover (genotype.crossover, per-gap recombination rate),
and hill-climb (parents = local optima = trained models).

E9 (recomb_landscape) -- the "why sex?" test: E8's dramatic super-parent
result used an ADDITIVE landscape. On rugged/epistatic landscapes, blindly
recombining local optima causes OUTBREEDING DEPRESSION -- offspring fall
below the parents, worse with both ruggedness and recombination rate (K=8,
free recomb: ~ -0.23), and the optimal recombination rate shrinks as
ruggedness grows. Design rule: merge freely when skills are complementary/
additive; sparingly (and with selection) when entangled.

E10 (directed_sex) -- directed sex beats biological sex: biology is stuck
with 2 random-mating parents and no offspring preview; an AI can choose
complementary mates, evaluate many recombinant offspring, keep the fittest,
and use unbounded parents (iterated recombine-then-select). Random
("biological") sex craters with ruggedness (0.66->0.51); directed sex
tracks/exceeds the best parent at every ruggedness -- converting the
outbreeding-depression catastrophe into a win. No biological analog.

Complete sexual-transmission picture: dramatic super-parent offspring when
skills are complementary (E8); outbreeding-depression risk when entangled
(E9); directed sex resolves the risk (E10). configs/layer1/{E9,E10}.yaml,
figures/plot_{E9,E10}.py, READMEs, +5 tests (117 green).

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-07-05 11:13:37 +01:00

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1.3 KiB
YAML

experiment: E10
kind: directed_sex
seed: 20260705
n_replicates: 24
# (Directed sex beats biological sex — the distinctly-AI superpower): on rugged landscapes, blind
# ("biological") sex suffers outbreeding depression (offspring worse than parents). But an AI can do
# what biology cannot: choose maximally-complementary mates, evaluate MANY recombinant offspring, and
# keep only the fittest, over several rounds (directed sex = iterated recombine-then-select, with no
# two-parent limit). Compare, across ruggedness K: best single parent vs RANDOM sex (blind) vs
# DIRECTED sex. Expect: random sex craters with ruggedness; directed sex avoids the catastrophe and
# matches or exceeds the best parent even when skills are entangled. Falsifier: directed sex does no
# better than random sex, or never recovers the best-parent level on rugged landscapes.
society:
L: 12
n_parents: 6
pop: 200 # offspring evaluated per round (mate choice + offspring selection)
keep: 8 # fittest offspring retained each round
rounds: 5 # rounds of recombine-then-select
rate: 0.2 # directed-sex recombination rate (random-sex uses free rate 0.5)
sweep:
- param: K
values: [2, 4, 6, 8, 10] # landscape ruggedness (all with parent diversity)
output: {dir: results/E10}