Regularized Emphatic Temporal-Difference Learning: Stability under Constant Stepsizes
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The paper introduces Regularized Emphatic Temporal‑Difference Learning (RETD), a modification of ETD that normalizes the post‑shock dynamics while preserving the emphatic TD signal and importance ratios. RETD achieves almost‑sure convergence under harmonic diminishing stepsizes and provides a conditional constant‑stepsize moment‑contraction guarantee, demonstrating negative Lyapunov exponents on a two‑state counterexample and the Baird point. Extensive experiments confirm RETD’s ability to recover the ETD fixed point, exhibit a non‑monotone stability region, and maintain task‑dependent performance.
arXiv:2606. 03532v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Self on-policy distillation trains a student policy against a teacher derived from its own parameter history, yet the teacher's update schedule -- which governs the \emph{temporal coupling} between teacher and student -- has not been systematically studied as a stability variable.
arXiv:2607. 14185v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Feedback-driven loops support iterative improvement in large language models, reinforcement learning, and autonomous discovery, yet their gains often diminish under repeated internal feedback.
Feedback-driven loops support iterative improvement in large language models, reinforcement learning, and autonomous discovery, yet their gains often diminish under repeated internal feedback. We study why closed-loop knowledge systems saturate and what external information can move them beyond their current attractors.
arXiv:2606. 05967v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: In this paper, we study the finite-time behavior of the TD(0) temporal-difference method with linear function approximation (LFA).
The paper presents a theoretical study of Adam in non‑stationary stochastic optimization, distinguishing two regimes: Euclidean tracking under adaptive strong monotonicity and high‑probability projected stationarity for general smooth objectives. It derives finite‑time bounds that decompose into initialization, objective drift, first‑moment tracking error (β₁), and preconditioner perturbation (β₂), and characterizes burn‑in times for constant and step‑decay schedules. The analysis reveals a noise–drift tradeoff, showing that in noise‑dominated settings Adam’s adaptive mechanisms can improve guarantees, while in drift‑dominated settings they may worsen tracking, potentially making vanilla SGD preferable.