docs(adr): land ratified ADR-0252 governing problem-solving paradigm
This commit is contained in:
Shay
parent
8b995ce0fb
commit
1ccef49130
1 changed files with 103 additions and 70 deletions
|
|
@ -1,26 +1,107 @@
|
|||
# ADR-0252: Problem-Solving Paradigm Consolidation — Retire Six Competing Unratified Formulations
|
||||
# ADR-0252: The CORE Problem-Solving Paradigm — Expert Structure-Mapping on a Predictive-Processing Substrate
|
||||
|
||||
**Status**: Accepted — this ADR is a **decision record only**. It records that the six paradigm
|
||||
formulations below are retired and archived, and that a single governing comprehension-and-solving
|
||||
paradigm will be authored under this same ADR number as a separate, human-led step. **This ADR does
|
||||
not itself define that paradigm.**
|
||||
**Status**: **Accepted** — ratified 2026-07-19 by Joshua Shay. Consolidates and supersedes the six prior paradigm formulations (per the reader-arc recalibration, ADR-0251). Ratification adopts the paradigm (§2), the mapping (§3), and the conformance bar (§4), and authorizes the §5 experiment. It does **not** authorize the §6 build, which stays gated on §5 returning GO under a separate ruling.
|
||||
**Date**: 2026-07-19
|
||||
**Deciders**: Joshua Shay (ruling authority) + Claude (consolidation executor, this pass)
|
||||
**Related**: ADR-0164 (Incremental Comprehension Reader — Accepted, unmoved, annotated
|
||||
`Superseded-by: ADR-0252` per this decision), ADR-0174 (Held-Hypothesis Comprehension — Accepted,
|
||||
unmoved, annotated `Superseded-by: ADR-0252` per this decision), ADR-0243/0249/0250/0251 (current,
|
||||
unaffected — see §3)
|
||||
**Companion doc**: `docs/research/paradigm-deadcode-audit-2026-07-19.md` (the dead-code audit this
|
||||
consolidation performed)
|
||||
**Deciders**: Joshua Shay (ruling authority) + Claude (synthesis)
|
||||
**Grounding**: *"The Ontogeny of Human Cognition: From Core Knowledge to Expert Problem-Solving Paradigms"* (2026-07-19) — Spelke/Carey (core knowledge), Quine/Carey (bootstrapping), Siegler (overlapping waves), Friston (predictive processing / free energy), Gopnik (causal Bayes nets), Gentner/Forbus (structure-mapping / SME), Newell/Simon (means-ends), Gigerenzer (fast-and-frugal), Chi/Feltovich/Glaser (novice→expert; surface vs deep structure).
|
||||
|
||||
**Supersedes (retire — see Section 9 / ADR-0251 archive):** semantic-substrate problem-solving master plan (2026-06-20); semantic-state-transition blueprint; semantic-symbolic binding-graph proposal; core-problem-solving-capability roadmap v2; the gsm8k-capability-paradigm sprint series (5–12). **Supersedes-in-place:** ADR-0164 (incremental comprehension reader), ADR-0174 (held-hypothesis comprehension).
|
||||
|
||||
**Preserves (governing, unchanged):** the discipline layer — `wrong=0`, refuse-don't-guess, decode-don't-generate, sealed-vs-practice separation, measure-on-real-GSM8K; the solving corridor — ADR-0243 (wave-field lifecycle), ADR-0249/0250 (reader→Hamiltonian compiler); the #77/#78 foundations.
|
||||
|
||||
---
|
||||
|
||||
## 1. Context — six competing, unratified paradigm documents
|
||||
## 1. The core claim
|
||||
|
||||
Between 2026-06-17 and 2026-06-20 the repository accumulated six distinct, mutually-competing
|
||||
problem-solving-paradigm formulations, none of which was ever ratified as an ADR. They sat alongside
|
||||
each other in `docs/analysis/`, `docs/handoffs/`, and `docs/implementation/`, each proposing a
|
||||
different shape for "how CORE should comprehend and solve a problem":
|
||||
CORE was built as geometric / wave cognition. Cognitive science's most unifying account shows that geometric / wave cognition **is** the physical substrate of human problem-solving: perception-and-reasoning as free-energy minimization on a predictive manifold (Friston), generalization as relational structure-alignment (Gentner), founded on geometric and numerical core-knowledge primitives (Spelke/Carey). Therefore **CORE's substrate already instantiates the human problem-solving paradigm** — the founding bet is vindicated. The project's single architectural error was to build a **novice** comprehender (34 bespoke surface organs) bolted onto an **expert** substrate it never used for comprehension.
|
||||
|
||||
This ADR ratifies the paradigm CORE already embodies and reorients the reader from novice (surface features) to expert (deep relational structure). It is the single governing source of truth; the six retired formulations were each a partial groping toward one of its layers.
|
||||
|
||||
## 2. The paradigm — five stages and the governing law
|
||||
|
||||
1. **Perceive → core primitives.** Reduce surface text to the primitives the substrate represents: quantities (the Number core-system), entities (the Object core-system), and their **relational roles** — containment / transfer / accumulation / comparison (two-argument relational predicates). Not surface-slot regexes.
|
||||
2. **Comprehend → Structure-Map (the expert move).** Build the problem's *relational structure* (a situation model as a role-predicate graph), **aggressively discard surface attributes**, and align it to the nearest known **canonical structure** by role, not resemblance, preferring systematic higher-order relations (Gentner's systematicity). Alignment is a conformal versor fit (SME).
|
||||
3. **Reconstruct → Quinian bootstrap.** When a structure isn't directly solvable, build a new canonical form by *placeholder → structural-map → inductive leap* (e.g. "twice the total" → placeholder the total, map it to the sum relation, then the doubling relation).
|
||||
4. **Solve → predictive processing / means-ends.** The canonical structure is the prior/goal; relaxation (active inference) minimizes prediction error to the ground state = the answer; organized as recursive difference-reduction toward the unknown (MEA).
|
||||
5. **Select → overlapping waves.** Hold multiple candidate structure-mappings at once; adaptively choose by difficulty; **suppress the urge to rely on superficial similarity** (Siegler's Mapping dimension); execute frugally (search / stop / decision rules).
|
||||
|
||||
**Governing law:** *propose a structure-mapping → ground it in exact source spans → reconstruct if needed → relax to the answer → emit only if the precision certificate holds, else refuse.*
|
||||
|
||||
## 3. The mapping — CORE already is each layer
|
||||
|
||||
| Human-cognition paradigm | CORE component (already built) | Status |
|
||||
|---|---|---|
|
||||
| **Number** core-knowledge (abstract, combinable, ratio-dependent/Weber) | `core/physics/quantity_kernel.py` — magnitudes as null points; add/subtract = combinability; scale-invariant projective decode = Weber ratio-dependence | Live (eval corridor) |
|
||||
| **Space** core-knowledge (geometric layout: distance/angle/direction) | Cl(4,1) conformal geometry (`algebra/`, `core/physics/`) | Live |
|
||||
| **Predictive Processing** (free-energy / prediction-error minimization; prior; precision-weighting = attention) | `cognitive_lifecycle.relax_to_ground` on `compile_quadratic_well`; the well = the prior; `RelaxationCertificate` = precision/surprisal bound | Live (eval corridor) |
|
||||
| **Structure-Mapping Engine** (align relations, discard attributes; *far less data than deep learning*) | `core/physics/dynamic_manifold.py::conformal_procrustes` | Built, off-serving, unwired to comprehension |
|
||||
| **Relational predicates** (two-argument roles) | semantic roles — containment / transfer / accumulation / comparison ("depth-language" thesis) | Partially represented |
|
||||
| **Overlapping Waves** (ranked competing strategies; suppress surface similarity) | ADR-0174 held-hypothesis reader (ranked open interpretations) | Built, deprecated — to revive |
|
||||
| **Quinian Bootstrapping** (placeholder → structural-map → inductive leap) | reconstruction; CORE's own build of exact arithmetic on the quantity kernel is the bootstrapping case study | Latent |
|
||||
| **Novice→Expert (surface→deep structure)** | the diagnosis: the 34 `resolve_promotable_*` organs are the novice's surface piles; the substrate is the expert engine | The correction |
|
||||
| **Precision-weighting / refuse-if-unreliable** | `wrong=0`-or-refuse | Governing |
|
||||
|
||||
The fit is not analogy. `relax_to_ground` *is* Friston's principle in Clifford algebra; `conformal_procrustes` *is* a Structure-Mapping Engine; the quantity kernel *is* the Number core-system. CORE is an expert substrate that has been driven by a novice reader.
|
||||
|
||||
## 4. Conformance bar (how every future capability is judged)
|
||||
|
||||
- **The metric IS the paradigm.** A capability earns its place only if it grasps **deep structure** — one concept subsuming a whole *family* of problems that share a relational structure (the generalization ratio > 1, the expert grouping). One-case, one-pattern additions (ratio ≈ 1) are the novice surface pile and are refused as debt.
|
||||
- **`wrong=0` is precision-weighting**, not a bolt-on: emit only when the structure is grounded and the certificate holds; otherwise refuse.
|
||||
- **Doctrine, now cognitively grounded:** Structure-Mapping is the canonical proof that powerful generalization is achievable *without statistical learning* ("far less data than deep learning"). This settles the earlier fork decisively in favor of the geometric path — no learned NLP components; SME is the expert mechanism and it is deterministic.
|
||||
|
||||
## 5. The one unknown — resolved with a controlled experiment (the acceptance gate)
|
||||
|
||||
The paradigm is correct in principle. Exactly one empirical claim is load-bearing and unproven: **can CORE's Cl(4,1) geometry carry a problem's relational structure faithfully enough that `conformal_procrustes` (the SME) aligns same-deep-structure problems and separates different-structure ones — driven by *relations*, invariant to *surface attributes*?** If yes, Structure-Map (stage 2) is buildable on the existing substrate. If no, stage 2 needs a different representation, and we learn that cheaply.
|
||||
|
||||
Mastery here means isolating the exact SME property with **controls**, not eyeballing residuals.
|
||||
|
||||
**Hypothesis H1.** There exists a principled embedding of a problem's role-predicate structure into Cl(4,1) point-configurations such that conformal-Procrustes alignment residual is (a) low within a deep structure, (b) high across deep structures, (c) **invariant to surface-attribute change**, and (d) **sensitive to structure change**.
|
||||
|
||||
**Design.**
|
||||
1. **Structure-labeled corpus.** Group problems by *known relational structure* (the role-predicate skeleton), each with multiple surface realizations. Minimum four structures with clean labels — e.g. S1 compare-multiplicative-then-total (the 0148 family), S2 transfer-then-query, S3 rate-application, S4 additive-comparison-then-total. Draw real cases from `holdout_dev/v1`; add controlled synthetic surface-variants only where needed for clean labels (marked as such).
|
||||
2. **Relational embedding (the crux — derive from the paradigm, do not improvise).** Map a problem's structure to a geometric configuration: entities/quantities → conformal points (via `quantity_kernel` / `VocabManifold`); each role-relation (contain/transfer/compare/rate) → a geometric relation between its argument points. The configuration must encode **role-structure** (who plays which role in which relation), never surface words or literal values. State the scheme explicitly.
|
||||
3. **The three decisive measurements**:
|
||||
- **(a) Separability** — within-structure `procrustes_residual` ≪ cross-structure, reported as a margin / ROC with a classifying threshold, not just means.
|
||||
- **(b) Attribute-invariance (the SME signature)** — hold structure fixed; rename entities, change numbers, swap synonyms → residual must stay low. If it moves with attributes, the embedding is novice/surface → **fail**.
|
||||
- **(c) Structure-sensitivity** — hold surface lexically similar; change the relational structure (e.g. a compare vs a transfer with near-identical words) → residual must jump. Proves alignment is driven by structure, not lexical overlap.
|
||||
- **(d) Systematicity** — chained/higher-order structures (A=2B, B=2C) align with same-chain problems.
|
||||
4. **Verdict.** **GO** iff (a) separable with margin AND (b) attribute-invariant AND (c) structure-sensitive — the geometry carries relational structure the SME way. **NO-GO** if alignment tracks surface/attributes or fails to separate — which cleanly refutes geometric SME for comprehension and redirects stage 2 to a different representation. A well-controlled NO-GO is a full-credit result.
|
||||
5. **If GO**, estimate the compression: how many holdout families collapse to how few canonical structures (the generalization ratio the expert grouping buys).
|
||||
6. **Discipline.** Off-serving; `holdout_dev/v1` only; sealed test untouched; `wrong=0` not yet in play (no answers are emitted — this measures structure alignment); verify-don't-claim (every number backed by a command); honest NO-GO welcomed; STOP before productionizing.
|
||||
|
||||
## 6. What changes in code
|
||||
|
||||
- **Keep, recognized as paradigm layers:** `quantity_kernel` (Number), `cognitive_lifecycle/relax_to_ground` (predictive-processing inference), `conformal_procrustes` (SME), the corridor (`turn_program`/`multi_register` = solve), the certificate + `wrong=0` (precision gate).
|
||||
- **Build (the missing expert-comprehension layer, gated on §5 GO):** a Structure-Map path — a role-predicate relational representation, a small library of canonical structures (base domains), and mapping a novel problem to the nearest canonical via `conformal_procrustes`.
|
||||
- **Represent relationally:** treat `MathProblemGraph` (or a layer above it) as a graph of two-argument role predicates, not surface slots.
|
||||
- **Revive + reframe:** ADR-0174's held-hypothesis reader as the overlapping-waves candidate-mapping selector.
|
||||
- **Supersede, verification-gated, over time:** the 34 surface organs — kept serving until the structure-mapper proves out, then retired.
|
||||
|
||||
## 7. Non-goals
|
||||
|
||||
No Smith-chart algebra (ADR-0246 §6); no Fibonacci "dimensional cascade" (not in the repo); no learned / statistical / LLM components — SME generalizes without them, which is the entire point. This ADR authorizes no serving change; §6 "Build" is gated on the §5 experiment returning GO, under its own ruling.
|
||||
|
||||
## 8. Ruling record (Shay)
|
||||
|
||||
**RATIFIED — 2026-07-19, Joshua Shay (ruling authority).**
|
||||
|
||||
1. **Adopted.** This ADR is the single governing problem-solving paradigm for CORE. The paradigm (§2), the CORE-component mapping (§3), and the conformance bar (§4) are in force. Every future capability is judged by the §4 metric: it earns its place only if it grasps a deep relational structure that subsumes a *family* of problems (generalization ratio > 1). One-case surface additions are debt and are refused.
|
||||
|
||||
2. **Retired.** The six prior paradigm formulations named in the front-matter are retired; ADR-0164 and ADR-0174 are superseded-in-place. ADR-0251 (recalibration) archives them. No competing paradigm doc remains authoritative.
|
||||
|
||||
3. **Preserved (unchanged, still governing).** The discipline layer (`wrong=0`, refuse-don't-guess, decode-don't-generate, sealed-vs-practice separation, measure-on-real-GSM8K); the solving corridor (ADR-0243 wave-field lifecycle, ADR-0249/0250 reader→Hamiltonian compiler); the #77/#78 foundations. The existing 34-organ reader keeps serving until a proven replacement exists — nothing is torn out on ratification.
|
||||
|
||||
4. **Authorized.** The §5 controlled structure-mapping experiment is authorized to run: off-serving, `holdout_dev/v1` only, sealed test untouched, verify-don't-claim, a well-controlled NO-GO welcomed as full-credit. Its verdict (GO iff separable-with-margin AND attribute-invariant AND structure-sensitive) is the acceptance gate for §6.
|
||||
|
||||
5. **NOT authorized.** The §6 build (the structure-map comprehension layer and any serving change) is **not** authorized by this ratification. It is gated on §5 returning GO and will be ruled on separately, on the evidence. No serving behavior changes today.
|
||||
|
||||
_Ratification adopts the paradigm and the experiment; it does not pre-commit the build. The geometry must earn stage 2 empirically._
|
||||
|
||||
---
|
||||
|
||||
## 9. Retirement Record — six unratified paradigm documents
|
||||
|
||||
This section records the retirement and archiving of the six competing, unratified paradigm formulations consolidated under this decision:
|
||||
|
||||
1. **Semantic-substrate master plan** —
|
||||
`docs/analysis/semantic-substrate-problem-solving-master-plan-2026-06-20.md`
|
||||
|
|
@ -30,60 +111,12 @@ different shape for "how CORE should comprehend and solve a problem":
|
|||
`docs/implementation/semantic-symbolic-binding-graph-proposal.md`
|
||||
4. **Problem-solving capability roadmap v2** —
|
||||
`docs/analysis/core-problem-solving-capability-roadmap-v2-2026-06-17.md`
|
||||
5. **GSM8K capability-paradigm sprint lookbacks** (eight dated retrospectives, one formulation
|
||||
iterated sprint-to-sprint) —
|
||||
5. **GSM8K capability-paradigm sprint lookbacks** (sprints 5–12 lookbacks) —
|
||||
`docs/analysis/gsm8k-capability-paradigm-sprint{5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12}-lookback-2026-06-17.md`
|
||||
6. **ADR-0174's deprecated in-ADR dispatch prescription** — the per-category injector dispatch table
|
||||
and legacy-regex-parser fallback that ADR-0174 itself marked `Deprecates:` in its header (see
|
||||
ADR-0174 §Deprecates). ADR-0174 as a whole remains Accepted; only this specific dispatch
|
||||
prescription is superseded.
|
||||
6. **ADR-0174's deprecated in-ADR dispatch prescription** — the per-category injector dispatch table and legacy-regex-parser fallback (superseded-in-place).
|
||||
|
||||
None of formulations 1–5 was ever promoted to ADR status. They were parallel, competing drafts —
|
||||
none governing, none ratified, several mutually inconsistent about what "comprehension" and "solving"
|
||||
should mean architecturally. Carrying six live-looking documents that read as authoritative but were
|
||||
never ruled on is a standing hazard: a future reader (human or agent) has no way to tell which one, if
|
||||
any, is load-bearing.
|
||||
### Archiving and Status Heuristics
|
||||
|
||||
## 2. Decision
|
||||
All files corresponding to formulations 1–5 have been moved to `docs/paradigm-archive/` with a `SUPERSEDED` warning header prepended to indicate they are historical and carry no governance weight.
|
||||
|
||||
Retire all six formulations. Move documents 1–5 (ten files total, including the eight sprint
|
||||
lookbacks) to `docs/paradigm-archive/`, each prefixed with:
|
||||
|
||||
```
|
||||
> SUPERSEDED 2026-07-19 — consolidated under ADR-0252. Archived, not governing.
|
||||
```
|
||||
|
||||
They are preserved for historical reference (the sprint lookbacks in particular record real,
|
||||
verified measurement history) but carry no governance weight.
|
||||
|
||||
Formulation 6 (ADR-0174's deprecated dispatch prescription) is handled differently because ADR-0174
|
||||
is itself an Accepted ADR and a permanent record: it is **not moved**. Instead, both ADR-0164 (the
|
||||
parent ADR) and ADR-0174 receive a `**Superseded-by:** ADR-0252` line in their header, alongside their
|
||||
existing `Status: Accepted`, to make the relationship explicit without rewriting history.
|
||||
|
||||
A single governing comprehension-and-solving paradigm will be authored under this ADR number,
|
||||
**as a separate, human-led step** — not as part of this consolidation pass. See §4.
|
||||
|
||||
## 3. What this decision does NOT touch
|
||||
|
||||
This is a documentation-retirement decision plus a dead-code cleanup pass (audited separately in
|
||||
`docs/research/paradigm-deadcode-audit-2026-07-19.md`). It does not change runtime behavior: the
|
||||
serving reader's `wrong=0` and the full smoke/test/holdout numbers are required to be byte-identical
|
||||
before and after every code removal performed under this consolidation (see the companion audit doc
|
||||
for the baseline and post-removal numbers).
|
||||
|
||||
Explicitly unaffected and not superseded by this ADR:
|
||||
|
||||
- ADR-0243 (propositional falsifier), ADR-0249 (reader→Hamiltonian compiler composition frontier),
|
||||
ADR-0250 (tier-2 multi-entity arithmetic), ADR-0251 (reader-arc recalibration) — all current and
|
||||
standing.
|
||||
- The `#77`/`#78` compare-multiplicative compiler tier and `NEUTRAL_COUNT_VERBS` positive-polarity
|
||||
foundations.
|
||||
- Any module proven live by the companion dead-code audit (importers, test coverage, or ADR
|
||||
reference found) — those stay, even if a retired document originally proposed or referenced them.
|
||||
|
||||
## 4. The paradigm — TO BE AUTHORED (human-led)
|
||||
|
||||
This section is an explicit placeholder. The single governing comprehension-and-solving paradigm that
|
||||
formulations 1–6 were each independently groping toward has not been authored. It is out of scope for
|
||||
this consolidation pass and is reserved for a separate, human-led step under this same ADR number.
|
||||
ADR-0164 and ADR-0174 have received a `**Superseded-by:** ADR-0252` header annotation and remain Accepted in-place as permanent records.
|
||||
|
|
|
|||
Loading…
Reference in a new issue