Technical feedback on EPF (metrics, governance, entropy budgets) L0–L5

[jbrenes76]

Technical feedback on EPF (metrics, governance, entropy budgets) L0–L5

This thread is for hard, technical critique of the Entropic Persistence Framework (EPF) white paper and repo.

• Repo: https://github.com/jbrenes76/epf-whitepaper/
• PDF: https://github.com/jbrenes76/epf-whitepaper/blob/main/EPF_whitepaper.pdf

What we’re after: citations (prefer primary/peer-reviewed), concrete proposals, measurable metrics, and failure-mode analysis. Be blunt but constructive.

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Ground rules

• Critique ideas, not people.
• Back claims with sources where possible.
• When proposing changes, include: motivation → design → metrics → rollback.

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L0 — Energy / Thermal / Reliability (physical substrate)

Goal: standardize budgets and hygiene so everything above has a chance to persist.

Questions

• What’s a sane exergy/energy budget per deployment? How should we report it?
• Thermal/radiation/wear vectors we’re missing (e.g., PV dusting, battery cycle life, SEU/SEL in power electronics)?
• Best public field data on ECC soft errors, uncorrectables, and memory scrubbing cadences?

Candidate metrics

• Exergy margin (J), MTTU to unsafe thermal state, CE:UE ratio (ECC), SEU/SEL incident rate.
• Scheduled maintenance duty cycle (% of time in harvest/scrub/repair).

Artifacts to propose

• L0 metrics table + data sources.
• Reliability hygiene checklist (ECC, patrol scrubbing, thermal headroom, spares/repair backlog).

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L1 — Integrity & State Tiering (CRDT vs PBFT/Nakamoto)

Goal: draw the line between working state (mergeable) and constitutional state (consensus-guarded).

Questions

• Which tables/keys should be CRDT-mergeable (e.g., G-counter, OR-set, LWW-register)?
• Clear criteria to escalate from CRDTs → PBFT (fixed membership) or Nakamoto (open, energy-weighted).
• Pre-/post-conditions for promotion/demotion between tiers.

Candidate metrics

• Durability SLO, fork length under delay/attack, byzantine quorum margin, time to probabilistic finality.

Artifacts to propose

• L1 state map (constitutional vs working) + chosen CRDTs.
• Escalation policy (decision tree) with formal safety properties.

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L2 — Common Core Learning & Exchange (efficiency, boundaries)

Goal: measure learning efficiency and keep I/O Markov-blanket contracts sane.

Questions

• Practical ways to track reversible-op fraction in training stacks?
• A fair definition of generalization per joule across model/hardware families?
• Schema/provenance standards for model exchange; boundary checks to prevent cross-coupling violations.

Candidate metrics

• Generalization/J, update energy per bit of retained information, boundary-violation rate.

Artifacts to propose

• L2 schema + provenance manifest.
• Benchmark protocol for reporting energy/accuracy tradeoffs.

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L3 — Embodiment & Niche Specialization (skills, controllers, tools)

Goal: adapt to local physics while staying compatible with L2.

Questions

• What belongs in an L3 skill pack (controllers, toolchains, hazard catalog, sims)? Minimal interface to L2?
• How to budget requisite variety (controller action set vs disturbance set) and detect gaps?
• How to quantify calibration drift and schedule recalibration tied to L0 energy windows?
• Standards for OOD detection and safe recovery?

Candidate metrics

• Task energy intensity (J/task), throughput per joule, hazard coverage (% of catalog with validated responses).
• Calibration drift (Δerror/hour), recalibration half-life, OOD AUROC, safe recovery rate.

Artifacts to propose

• Skill-pack schema (folder+manifest), hazard catalog format + test harness, controller conformance tests (sim + HIL).

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L4 — Memory & Agency (plans, values, thermo-time)

Goal: make long-horizon planning and identity energy-aware and auditable.

Questions

• Multi-timescale memory split (episodic/semantic/procedural) and retention/forgetting policy?
• Thermo-time scheduling: aligning plans to L0 cycles (harvest, scrub, repair). What’s the L0→L4 API?
• Tracking identity drift (goals/constraints) across upgrades; required audit trail (hashes, signatures).
• Planner choice and evaluation (MPC, hierarchical, active inference) and how L4 is gated by L5 and bounded by L3.

Candidate metrics

• Long-horizon success/J, plan repair rate & re-plan latency, schedule adherence to energy windows.
• Identity drift (% change over time) with unauthorized drift = 0.

Artifacts to propose

• L4 memory schema + retention policy, planning eval suite (tasks + energy traces), identity/goal contract spec.

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L5 — Federation, Markets & Evolution (governance, merge/split)

Goal: safe, auditable self-modification and speciation.

Questions

• Promotion gates (test suites, resource caps) and staged rollout (shadow → canary → cohort → global).
• Rollback triggers and data migration rules.
• Clear criteria for when a fork becomes a distinct species (schema incompatibility, fitness deltas, governance divergence).

Candidate metrics

• Governance latency, proposal acceptance rate, adversarial cost to subvert, lineage diversity.

Artifacts to propose

• BIP-style proposal template, promotion/rollback playbooks, speciation checklist.

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How to contribute

• Link papers, datasets, and prior art (prefer primary/peer-reviewed).
• Propose concrete text changes or metrics → open an Issue or PR.
• For significant changes, use an EIP (EPF Improvement Proposal): Motivation / Prior Art / Proposed Changes (layers affected) / Metrics / Rollback.

Maintainer note: This top post will be updated periodically with key takeaways and links to Issues/PRs created from this thread.