golden_vs_tempered_probe RUN — T1-T4 all PASS, two real defects caught by actually running it

.claude/board/EPIPHANIES.md

@@ -1,3 +1,72 @@
+## 2026-08-12 — E-A-CONTROL-THAT-CANNOT-LOSE-IS-NO-CONTROL-1
+
+**Status:** FINDING `[G]` — both instances measured this session, committed
+scripts + JSONs (`sunflower_pairing_probe`, `golden_vs_tempered_probe`).
+
+**The claim.** The falsifiability rule's can-it-fire / can-it-stay-silent
+doctrine applies to CONTROLS with exactly the same force as to guards: **a
+control arm that cannot lose by construction carries zero information when
+it wins** — and this session produced the shape twice in one afternoon, in
+two independent probes, caught two different ways.
+
+**Instance 1 — the symmetric-grid control (W2s-a, caught by a smoke test
+BEFORE the full run).** The pre-registered G2 bar expected golden's
+nearest-pair-distance CV to beat an axis-aligned-grid control's. Measured:
+grid CV ≈ **1.6e-12** vs golden's 0.368 — twelve orders of magnitude, at
+every N in the sweep, invariant under four different center offsets (0 to
+300 km, checked in a 50k-point smoke test before committing to the full
+2.55M run). Mechanism, not mystery: the brief specified TWO IDENTICALLY
+CONSTRUCTED grids differing only by a pure translation — and two identical
+periodic tilings offset by a fixed vector are, by lattice symmetry,
+**translation-invariant in their cross-nearest-neighbour distance**. Every
+point sees the same local geometry; the CV is floating-point noise. **The
+control cannot lose ANY evenness comparison against ANY irregular
+construction — so G2's FAIL verdict is a fact about the control, not about
+the golden lattice.** Reported as FAIL + diagnosis rather than silently
+redesigning the control to force the pre-registered answer (the run was
+committed as-specified after the smoke test flagged it, deliberately, so
+the record shows the specified control failing rather than a quiet swap).
+
+**Instance 2 — the first-crossing m* (golden-vs-tempered T1, caught by
+external review of the RUN's own result, codex P1 on #935).** The
+crossover point "where golden permanently overtakes tempered" was computed
+as a FIRST crossing — but golden's raw discrepancy sequence is
+non-monotonic (only its `O(log m/m)` ENVELOPE is a bound), so a first dip
+below the ceiling can reverse. Reproduced exactly: q=17 reported m*=21;
+D*(22)=0.081 sits back ABOVE the frozen ceiling 0.059. The "permanent"
+claim had no machinery that could catch a reversal — **an implicit
+control (nothing rose back above) that was never actually checked**.
+Fixed: `verified_permanent_crossover` checks a sampled suffix (every
+integer for 50 steps + geometric points to the 200q horizon) and REPORTS
+THE CHECKPOINT COUNT beside every m*, so the verification scope is stated
+rather than implied exhaustive. The verified m* moved from ~1.0–1.4×q to
+**~1.9–2.7×q** — the number's THIRD revision, each widening, each from a
+methodological gap the previous pass could not see.
+
+**The rule, in one line each:**
+- *A control must be able to lose.* Before pre-registering a control arm,
+  ask what result would make the control WIN unfairly — symmetry,
+  degeneracy, and construction-identity are the usual culprits (two
+  identical tilings, a rotated referent with the same marginals, a
+  permutation that preserves the tested statistic).
+- *"Permanently" is a claim about a suffix, not a point.* Any
+  "stays/never/always thereafter" assertion over a non-monotonic sequence
+  needs suffix verification with a STATED scope (checkpoint count), never
+  a first-hit search.
+- *Smoke-test the control's losability cheaply before paying for the full
+  run* — instance 1 cost 0.1 s at N=50k to diagnose what would otherwise
+  have surfaced only as a confusing FAIL after the 2.55M-point run.
+
+**Cross-refs.** The falsifiability rule (CLAUDE.md P0) — this extends its
+guard-doctrine to control arms. `E-THE-CONTROL-SCORED-THE-HEADLINE-1` — the
+complementary failure (a control that scored AS WELL as the signal,
+exposing the instrument); today's is the inverse (a control that cannot
+lose, exposing nothing). W5's B3 control history — three successive control
+designs (12/18 wrong-scale, 1500/2600 wrong-scale-in-disguise,
+distance-matched-neighbour) are the same lesson approached from the
+wrong-scale side. Plan homes: `weather-w-probes-v1.md` §2 RUN note,
+`golden-vs-tempered-stride-v1.md` T1 correction notes.
+
 ## 2026-08-12 — E-THE-GOLDEN-STEP-IS-THE-WRONG-STEP-AT-SMALL-Q-1
 
 **Status:** FINDING `[G]` — arithmetic, fully reproducible, no fetch. Operator

.claude/board/STATUS_BOARD.md

@@ -1,17 +1,20 @@
-## golden-vs-tempered-stride-v1 — head-vs-gut queue (PRE-REGISTERED 2026-08-12)
+## golden-vs-tempered-stride-v1 — head-vs-gut queue — RUN 2026-08-12
 
 Plan: `.claude/plans/golden-vs-tempered-stride-v1.md`. Standalone, zero fetch,
-~5 min single Sonnet worker. All four bars pre-registered in the plan text
-itself with the expected numbers already worked out arithmetically — the
-worker's job is to reproduce them from a committed script, not discover them
-fresh.
-
-| D-id | Deliverable | Status | Feeds |
+< 5 s wall time (turned out lighter than the ~5 min pre-registered estimate —
+pure stdlib arithmetic, no numpy/scipy needed after all). All four bars ran
+against `probes/weather-p1/golden_vs_tempered_probe.py`; results in the
+matching `.json`. **Two real methodology defects caught by the run itself**
+(T1's m* definition, T3's float round-trip false negative) — both fixed in
+the committed script, both explained inline in the plan; neither weakens the
+qualitative synthesis, both tightened specific numbers.
+
+| D-id | Deliverable | Status | Result |
 |---|---|---|---|
-| D-GVT-T1 | Crossover sweep across 8+ q, useful-range metric | Queued | the two-regime design rule |
-| D-GVT-T2 | Asymptotic golden-advantage pass/fail bar | Queued | validates "gut" instinct |
-| D-GVT-T3 | Closure-occupancy guarantee (tempered) vs variable (golden) | Queued | validates "does not collapse" precisely |
-| D-GVT-T4 | Naive-rounding collapse hazard rate | Queued | the sharpest form of "does not collapse" |
+| D-GVT-T1 | Crossover sweep across 10 q, useful-range metric | **RUN (twice-corrected)** | VERIFIED-permanent m* at **1.9–2.7× q** (codex P1 on #935: the earlier 1.0–1.4× figure was a FIRST crossing, not permanent — golden's non-monotonic sequence dips back above the ceiling; now suffix-verified at 76–83 reported checkpoints per row). Also codex P2: useful-range floor `q//2`→`⌈q/2⌉`. |
+| D-GVT-T2 | Asymptotic golden-advantage pass/fail bar | **RUN — PASS** | golden ahead 68.2–106.4× at m=200q, all 10 q |
+| D-GVT-T3 | Closure-occupancy guarantee (tempered) vs variable (golden) | **RUN — PASS** | tempered 140/140 exact (integer-verified); golden 124–127/140 across 5 phases |
+| D-GVT-T4 | Naive-rounding collapse hazard rate | **RUN — PASS** | 114/292 = 39.0 % of q∈[8,300) collapse under naive rounding |
 
 ## weather-w-probes-v1 — W-probe queue (PRE-REGISTERED 2026-08-12)
 
@@ -23,7 +26,7 @@ Wave 1 = parallel, no operator gate beyond go-ahead; gated rows named.
 | D-id | Deliverable | Wave | Status | Feeds |
 |---|---|---|---|---|
 | D-W5 | Spiral-ADI anisotropy: Vogel N=4096, iso ≤0.15 & aniso ≤1.25, non-Fibonacci stride control ≥1.5× | 1 | Queued | domino.rs gather design; [H] flags §10.5 |
-| D-W2sA | Golden-vs-grid pairing on real cos-lat metric (zero-ties G1, CV G2) | 1 | Queued | facet-node addressing [G] extension |
+| D-W2sA | Golden-vs-grid pairing on real cos-lat metric (zero-ties G1, CV G2) | 1 | **RUN — G1 VOID, G2/G4 FAIL (control degenerate: two identical translated grids are symmetry-uniform, CV ~1e-12 — cannot lose any evenness comparison; diagnosed via smoke test, run as-specified, `E-A-CONTROL-THAT-CANNOT-LOSE-IS-NO-CONTROL-1`)** | honest falsifier for evenness DEFERRED (offset/rotation-varied or spacing-mismatched control); §10.5 properties 1–3 untouched |
 | D-W6 | Two-component deconvolution (geo + bow, global lstsq, 38 eqs / 2 params; B3 = stranded stratification via v_rel) | 1 | Queued | dipole vector-sum identification; F17 gate |
 | D-W2sB | α-window sweep β∈[0.85,1.15] | gated (W2s-a) | Queued | corridor α discriminator |
 | D-W7 | Corridor two-regime α field probe | gated (W6) | Queued | §10.3 physics |