Curriculum-gate a penalty to the phase where its disease occurs - early on it only taxes exploration
gate-penalties-to-the-disease-phase.For penalties aimed at late-stage pathologies (freezing, saturation, degenerate attractors), ramp the weight in only after exploration noise has decayed; anchor the terminal weight to measured healthy-vs-sick raw values, and shift all related tripwires to after the ramp completes.
Symptom
The action_saturation penalty, applied from iteration 0 in v8a, taxed exploration itself: with init_noise_std 1.2 the sampled actions paid ~-2.45/step before any policy had formed - while the disease it targets (clamp freezing) is a LATE pathology (v9 froze at iteration ~2624).
Context
v10 re-introduced the same penalty behind a curriculum gate: weight 0 until iter 1000, ramping linearly to -1.0 by iter 2000 - present only when the disease can occur, absent while exploration noise dominates. The trust argument was evidence, not hope: in v8a the term, while active, had pulled joint_pos_ref from 0.041 up to 0.155 and climbing - proof it can extract a policy from the frozen pit. Weight magnitudes were anchored to measured raw values (healthy v5 0.310 / v6 0.106 vs frozen v7 1.145 / v9 1.22 per step: at -1.0 healthy pays 6-18% of tracking, frozen pays 60%+, standing ~0). v10c then isolated the gated term as THE anti-freeze mechanism by single variable, upgraded to untouchable status in v11: "S 的门控机制(v10c 单变量铁案:任何情况下 不许撤,只许调终值)" - and v11 dared to relax other penalties only because S stood guard.
Change
action_saturation gated 0 -> -1.0 over iters 1000-2000 (later terminal value tuned -1.0 -> -0.5 with the gate mechanism itself frozen); tripwires adjusted to respect the gate's timing (freeze check moved to iter 2500-3000 to give the ramped term its effect window).
Outcome
Freezing stopped recurring while early training kept full exploration; the mechanism graduated from experiment to invariant within two versions.
Mechanism
A penalty's incidence depends on who occupies its support: early in training that is exploration noise (whose suppression starves learning), late it is the converged pathology. Time-gating aligns the penalty's presence with its target's presence, buying the constraint without the exploration tax - and tripwire timing must then be computed from the gate schedule, not from ungated precedents.
Applies when
- a structural penalty punishes exploration in early training
- a late-onset pathology (freeze/saturation) needs a standing guard
- deciding when a curriculum ramp should engage
“v8a 实锤它的病根是"罚在采样动作上"——init_noise_std 1.2 的早期等于罚探索(~−2.45/步);而冻结是晚期病(v9 速率 2624 才死平)… 门控让它只在病发期在场。… v8a 里它在场时 joint_pos_ref 从 0.041 爬到 0.155 且仍在升——有从低谷爬出的实证。”