Long-range dependency in integer multiplication is a mirage from 1D representation; a 2D grid reduces it to local 3x3 operations, letting a 321-parameter neural cellular automaton generalize perfectly to inputs 683 times longer than training while Transformers fail.
On the Spatiotemporal Dynamics of Generalization in Neural Networks
3 Pith papers cite this work. Polarity classification is still indexing.
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abstract
Why do neural networks fail to generalize addition from 16-digit to 32-digit numbers, while a child who learns the rule can apply it to arbitrarily long sequences? We argue that this failure is not an engineering problem but a violation of physical postulates. Drawing inspiration from physics, we identify three constraints that any generalizing system must satisfy: (1) Locality -- information propagates at finite speed; (2) Symmetry -- the laws of computation are invariant across space and time; (3) Stability -- the system converges to discrete attractors that resist noise accumulation. From these postulates, we derive -- rather than design -- the Spatiotemporal Evolution with Attractor Dynamics (SEAD) architecture: a neural cellular automaton where local convolutional rules are iterated until convergence. Experiments on three tasks validate our theory: (1) Parity -- demonstrating perfect length generalization via light-cone propagation; (2) Addition -- achieving scale-invariant inference from L=16 to L=1 million with 100% accuracy, exhibiting input-adaptive computation; (3) Rule 110 -- learning a Turing-complete cellular automaton without trajectory divergence. Our results suggest that the gap between statistical learning and logical reasoning can be bridged -- not by scaling parameters, but by respecting the physics of computation.
years
2026 3verdicts
UNVERDICTED 3representative citing papers
A 2D neural cellular automaton spontaneously self-organizes into a Proto-CKY representation that exhibits syntactic processing capabilities for context-free grammars when trained on membership problems.
A neural cellular automaton learns compositional rules from data alone to achieve structural generalization on the SLOG semantic parsing benchmark, reaching 67.3% accuracy and fully succeeding on 11 of 17 categories.
citing papers explorer
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On the Mirage of Long-Range Dependency, with an Application to Integer Multiplication
Long-range dependency in integer multiplication is a mirage from 1D representation; a 2D grid reduces it to local 3x3 operations, letting a 321-parameter neural cellular automaton generalize perfectly to inputs 683 times longer than training while Transformers fail.
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On the Emergence of Syntax by Means of Local Interaction
A 2D neural cellular automaton spontaneously self-organizes into a Proto-CKY representation that exhibits syntactic processing capabilities for context-free grammars when trained on membership problems.
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Structural Generalization on SLOG without Hand-Written Rules
A neural cellular automaton learns compositional rules from data alone to achieve structural generalization on the SLOG semantic parsing benchmark, reaching 67.3% accuracy and fully succeeding on 11 of 17 categories.