Two changes from round 36:
1. §3 paragraph 3: replace 'observational association' with full causal claim
based on existing April 7 no-out_ln data (3 seeds, ResMLP-d256+terminal-LN
removed, residual skip kept): ||h_L||=1.21e7 (Mode 1 (a) still fires) but
||g_L||=7.4e-4 (HEALTHY, ~10000x above floor — (b) eliminated). Final acc
0.327±0.013 indistinguishable from vanilla DFA's 0.308±0.014. Wording
upgraded to 'terminal LayerNorm is necessary for Mode 1(b) in the audited
residual ResMLP and ViT-Mini setting'.
2. §3 paragraph after random-target ablation: add EP under random targets
smoke result (||h_L||=586 at ep 5 vs DFA's 14510 at ep 3, 25x gap).
Random-target assay now cleanly separates fixed-feedback methods (explode)
from EP (bounded). Cross-method negative control complete.
- experiments/ep_baseline.py: add --random_targets flag + train_ep parameter
- v2.5 paper compiles to 15 pages, main content 1-9 (right at E&D limit)
Combined picture (rounds 32-36):
- Mode 1 (a) localized to 'fixed-feedback local-credit objectives without
scale control on architectures absorbing scale at output'. Falsified:
residual skip (round 33), task signal (round 34), DFA-specific (round 35).
EP is the working negative control (round 36).
- Mode 1 (b) localized to terminal LayerNorm via the 1/||h|| Jacobian.
Causally established by April 7 no_outln 3-seed data.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.6 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>