COGNITIVE-CYCLE-3AGENTS-PILOT-V2
artifactcognitive-cycle-3agents-pilot-v2
In plain language
Same 3-agent cognitive-cycle experiment as v1, but the message-type parser was broken — it threw away most agent outputs as «SILENT» when they used slight format variations. We are rerunning with a lenient parser that accepts the variations the LLM actually produces. If the agents now show diverse message types, v1's «convergence» was just the parser bug. If they still converge, the substrate really does flatten asymmetry.
▶ Technical details
Research hypothesis
RETAKE of cognitive-cycle-3agents-pilot (v1, commit 78abbf9d6) with fixed parser + prompt examples. v1 diagnosis: strict [TYPE] content whitelist rejected most agent outputs (variants like [COUNT] x, OBSERVATION — x, OBS: x all marked SILENT), forcing 19/24 turns into single OBSERVATION bucket + 5 SILENT — the apparent «convergence» (P1 JS=0.000) was an implementation artifact, not a substrate property. 8/19 broadcasts even contained the literal word «content» (LLM copying template placeholder). v2 fixes: 1. Lenient parser: bracketed/colon/dash header patterns; normalize COUNT|NUMBER|ENUM→OBSERVATION, HYPOTHESIS|IDEA|GUESS→CLAIM, ASK|INQUIRY→QUESTION, SKEPTICAL|UNSURE→DOUBT, QUIET|NOTHING→SILENT. Unrecognized text → FREE_TEXT (new bucket, broadcasts content). Template-leak guard: «content» literal → FAILED_PARSE (separate diagnostic bucket, not silent). 2. Prompt examples: 5 concrete one-line examples for each type embedded in ACT specification; SILENT explicitly framed as valid choice not failure. 3. Smoke test: scripts/test_cc_parser.py exercises 21 representative inputs. Hypothesis tested: was v1's convergence finding (P1 JS=0.000, P4 cos=0.985) a substrate property (substrate genuinely flattens all asymmetry into one output style) OR a parser artifact (LLM produced diverse types, parser threw them away)? v2 with working parser distinguishes.
Experimental setup
Type: 2-condition-architecture-vs-naive
| Condition | Parameters |
|---|---|
| COGNITIVE_CYCLE | architecture: cognitive_cycle, asymmetric_beliefs: true, private_memory: true, typed_protocol: true, use_retrieval: true, note: Full architecture: 3 agents with different starting beliefs, per-agent private memory, lenient-parser typed-message protocol (OBSERVATION/QUESTION/CLAIM/DOUBT/SILENT + FREE_TEXT + FAILED_PARSE diagnostics), structured PERCEIVE-REFLECT-PLAN-ACT cycle, retrieval-augmented context (top-3 memories by cosine vs env+latest-msgs). |
| NAIVE_REPLICATION | architecture: naive_replication, asymmetric_beliefs: false, private_memory: false, typed_protocol: false, use_retrieval: false, note: Replicates differentiation-without-injection baseline as control: 3 agents with IDENTICAL starting belief, shared text memory (last 10 lines dumped), free-text output (no typed protocol), no retrieval. Mandatory Goodhart-audit per AUTHORS-MATRIX — distinguishes architecture effect from substrate noise. |
Factors: architecture (cognitive_cycle, naive_replication)
Parameters
- model
- qwen2.5-7b-instruct-1m
- n_agents
- 3
- n_runs_per_condition
- 1
- temperature
- 0.85