局部验证无法发现跨场景推理中的隐藏矛盾,论文提出用同调理论检测。
Local verification cannot detect non-transportability: a cohomological theory of context preservation in agentic reasoning

- 用上同调理论建模推理路径,将证据冲突分解为梯度、旋度和调和部分
- 证明仅靠单纯形一致性检查无法识别调和部分带来的路径依赖差异
- 提出新方法Ksetra,通过循环基统计判断是否应拒绝结论,适合高风险决策系统
智能体系统在生物、临床与金融等不同场景间迁移结论时,常用局部验证机制——每步检查实体可表示性、参数兼容性及输出与计划的一致性。我们证明此类机制在结构上不完整。将上下文空间覆盖的神经网络与实值1-上链建模,智能体链式推理等价于路径积分:结论路径无关当且仅当上链为恰当上链,路径分歧恰好对应第一契赫上同调类的全息效应。霍奇分解将证据冲突分为梯度(校准)、旋度(局部不一致,出现在三重重叠处)和调和部分。核心结论是:任何基于单纯形的支持一致性检查都无法区分ω与ω+h(h为调和项),而后者仍会导致有效路径间的非零分歧;检测需依赖循环基上的统计量。由此提出的算法Ksetra通过余边界投影估计,并以调和分量作为拒答门控,我们给出其机制:它源于效应修饰与重叠人群构成的交互,当无效应修饰时趋于机器精度零。证据网络自由度分为校准、一致性与可运输性,导出全局结论存在性的精确F检验;我们在不等精度下量化失真,并提供精度白化形式恢复精确性。外汇市场中,无套利零假设使上链恰为余边界,成为校准基准:该检验尺寸正确,对环路套利敏感,但忽略三角套利。
原文摘要 · Abstract (English)
Agentic AI systems routinely transport conclusions across biological, clinical and financial contexts, and the emerging safeguard is local verification: checking at each step that the entity is representable in the chosen tool, that parameters are compatible, and that outputs cohere with the plan. We prove this class of safeguard is structurally incomplete. Modelling a covering of context space by its nerve and evidence by a real-valued 1-cochain, an agent chaining evidence performs path integration: its conclusion is path-independent if and only if the cochain is exact, and disagreement between valid reasoning paths is exactly the holonomy of a first Cech cohomology class. Hodge decomposition partitions evidence conflict into a gradient part (calibration), a curl part (local inconsistency, visible at triple overlaps) and a harmonic part. Our central result is that no family of simplex-supported consistency checks can distinguish omega from omega+h for harmonic h, which nonetheless generates non-zero disagreement between valid paths; detection requires a statistic on a cycle basis. The resulting procedure, Ksetra, estimates by coboundary projection and gates abstention on the harmonic component, which we give a mechanism: it arises from effect modification combined with overlap-specific population composition, and vanishes to machine precision when effect modification is absent. The degrees of freedom of an evidence network partition into calibration, coherence and transport, yielding an exact F-test for the existence of a global claim; we quantify its distortion under unequal precision and supply the precision-whitened form that restores exactness. Foreign exchange, where the arbitrage-free null makes the cochain exactly a coboundary, serves as a calibration bench: the test is correctly sized, fires on loop arbitrage, and ignores triangular arbitrage.
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