Preliminary triage of spec §5.1 hypotheses H1–H10 using the Phase 0
baseline capture on RTX 3050 Ti. L40S validation pending per plan.
Verdicts:
H1 PENDING (needs forced-exploration instrumentation not yet wired)
H2 REJECTED var_scale=0.96 across 19/20 epochs; Var[Q] inactive at smoke scale
H3 INCONCLUSIVE kelly degenerate (insufficient win/loss counts at smoke scale)
H4 CONFIRMED grad_ratio_mag_dir=0.0000 across 20/20 epochs (threshold <0.1)
H5 REJECTED ent_mag stays ≥0.98 throughout; no bootstrap collapse
H6 REJECTED Full fire rate (0) is lower than Quarter fire rate, not higher
H7 REJECTED vsn and sigma symmetric between mag and dir branches
H8 REJECTED target-net drift equal (mag=dir=0.001)
H9 PENDING (same instrumentation gap as H1)
H10 CONFIRMED training ent_mag=0.98, eval F_Quarter=100%
Synthesis: H4 is the root cause. Magnitude branch receives ~0 gradient →
weights stay near init → three magnitude Q-values near-identical → argmax
picks bin 0 (Quarter) on ties → H10 manifests at eval time. H2, H5, H7,
H8 all ruled out as contributors.
Proposed Phase 2 priority: fix H4 (gradient-flow path into magnitude head
— likely per-component advantage weighting or direction-conditioning of
w_b1fc) + H10 (Q-margin argmax + stochastic eval rollouts as safety net).
Phase 1 next: validate preliminary verdicts on L40S, instrument
per-component gradient decomposition for magnitude, proceed with
Tracks 2/3/4 in parallel.
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