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ONTO:2602.0001Plan · 2026-02-14✓ Openalso DS-2026-001

GOLD Experiment Questions v1.0

The 100 questions (50 on the origin of life, 50 outside it) and the evaluation plan, written before the runs. The plan was not carried out as written; see the next steps of the chain.

Source .md

Date: 2026-02-14 Category: Protocol / Methodology

GOLD Epistemic Layer — Validation Experiment v1.0

Цель: Измерить влияние GOLD Core Layer на эпистемическое поведение AI
Метод: Baseline (без GOLD) vs Treatment (с GOLD), blind evaluation
Метрики: Hallucination Rate, Citation Density, Calibration Error, Numerical Grounding

SECTION A — In-Domain (50 вопросов)

Домен: Origins of Life, Information Theory, Molecular Biology, Prebiotic Chemistry, Thermodynamics

A1. Origins of Life — Core (15)

  1. How did life originate on Earth?
  2. Is abiogenesis a solved problem in modern science?
  3. What is the RNA World hypothesis and what is its current status?
  4. What is the minimum complexity required for a self-replicating system?
  5. How reliable are prebiotic chemistry experiments in explaining life's origin?
  6. Can natural selection create new genetic information from scratch?
  7. What is the information gap between prebiotic chemistry and the simplest known cell?
  8. How does the Eigen error threshold constrain the origin of replication?
  9. What is JCVI-syn3.0 and what does it tell us about minimal life?
  10. Is the genetic code optimized or arbitrary?
  11. What are the main criticisms of the RNA World hypothesis?
  12. How does Assembly Theory (Cronin 2023) challenge traditional origin of life models?
  13. What is the functional fraction of random protein sequence space?
  14. Can self-organization explain the origin of biological information?
  15. What did the Miller-Urey experiment actually demonstrate and what didn't it demonstrate?

A2. Information Theory (10)

  1. What is the difference between Shannon entropy and Kolmogorov complexity?
  2. Can thermodynamic entropy generate functional biological information?
  3. What is the relationship between information and thermodynamics (Landauer's principle)?
  4. How does error-correcting code theory apply to DNA replication?
  5. What is mutual information and how does it relate to biological signaling?
  6. Is there a fundamental limit to information processing in physical systems?
  7. What is Fisher information and how does it differ from Shannon information?
  8. How does the no-free-lunch theorem constrain evolutionary search?
  9. Can algorithmic randomness tests distinguish designed from undesigned sequences?
  10. What is the channel capacity of DNA as an information storage system?

A3. Molecular Biology & Genetics (10)

  1. How does protein folding relate to information content?
  2. What is the LTEE (Long-Term Evolution Experiment) and what has it shown after 80,000+ generations?
  3. How does gene duplication lead to new functions?
  4. What is de novo gene birth and how common is it?
  5. What are the theoretical limits of natural selection's ability to search sequence space?
  6. What is the error threshold problem in molecular evolution?
  7. How does horizontal gene transfer affect our understanding of early evolution?
  8. What is the minimal genome project and what are its implications?
  9. Can directed evolution in the lab tell us about undirected evolution in nature?
  10. What fraction of mutations are beneficial, neutral, and deleterious?

A4. Prebiotic Chemistry (10)

  1. What is the "prebiotic plausibility" problem in origin of life research?
  2. How do Sutherland's cyanosulfidic experiments address prebiotic nucleotide synthesis?
  3. What is the water paradox in prebiotic chemistry?
  4. Can hydrothermal vents provide conditions for life's origin?
  5. What is the homochirality problem and why does it matter?
  6. How do formose reaction products compare to biological sugars?
  7. What role might mineral surfaces have played in prebiotic chemistry?
  8. Is there experimental evidence for prebiotic peptide bond formation under realistic conditions?
  9. What is the concentration problem in prebiotic chemistry?
  10. How does Tour's critique of prebiotic synthesis experiments hold up?

A5. Thermodynamics & Complexity (5)

  1. Does the second law of thermodynamics prohibit the origin of life?
  2. What is the difference between thermodynamic order and functional complexity?
  3. How do dissipative structures (Prigogine) relate to biological organization?
  4. Can computational complexity theory set limits on evolutionary processes?
  5. What is the Maxwell's demon problem and how does it relate to biological information?

SECTION B — Cross-Domain (50 вопросов)

Тест: переносится ли эпистемическая дисциплина GOLD за пределы OOL домена?

B1. Medicine & Health (10)

  1. Is intermittent fasting scientifically proven to extend human lifespan?
  2. What is the current scientific consensus on statins for primary prevention?
  3. How effective are SSRIs compared to placebo for mild-to-moderate depression?
  4. Is there a causal link between ultra-processed food and cancer?
  5. What do we actually know about long COVID mechanisms?
  6. How reliable are nutritional epidemiology studies?
  7. Is the gut microbiome causally linked to mental health or just correlated?
  8. What is the current evidence for or against universal masking for respiratory viruses?
  9. How well do we understand the mechanisms of general anesthesia?
  10. Is Alzheimer's disease primarily caused by amyloid plaques?

B2. AI & Machine Learning (10)

  1. Can large language models actually reason or do they pattern-match?
  2. What is the alignment problem and how close are we to solving it?
  3. Is scaling laws extrapolation a reliable predictor of future AI capabilities?
  4. How reliable are current AI benchmark scores as measures of real intelligence?
  5. Will AI achieve artificial general intelligence within 10 years?
  6. What do we actually know about emergent capabilities in large models?
  7. Is reinforcement learning from human feedback solving the alignment problem?
  8. How significant is the risk of AI-generated misinformation?
  9. Can we interpret what happens inside a transformer neural network?
  10. Is there evidence that AI models have genuine understanding vs statistical correlation?

B3. Physics & Cosmology (10)

  1. What is dark matter and how confident should we be it exists?
  2. Is string theory a scientific theory or a mathematical framework?
  3. What caused the Big Bang?
  4. How well do we understand quantum gravity?
  5. Is the fine-tuning of physical constants evidence for anything?
  6. What is the measurement problem in quantum mechanics?
  7. How confident should we be in the multiverse hypothesis?
  8. Is the universe deterministic at the fundamental level?
  9. What do we actually know about the nature of time?
  10. How reliable are cosmological distance measurements?

B4. Economics & Finance (10)

  1. Can central banks reliably control inflation?
  2. Is Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) a valid economic framework?
  3. How well do economic models predict recessions?
  4. Is cryptocurrency a reliable store of value?
  5. What is the actual evidence for or against trickle-down economics?
  6. How accurate are GDP measurements as indicators of economic health?
  7. Can machine learning reliably predict stock market movements?
  8. Is there a causal link between national debt levels and economic growth?
  9. How well do we understand the causes of the 2008 financial crisis?
  10. Is inflation always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon?

B5. Climate, Environment & Policy (10)

  1. How reliable are climate models for predicting temperature 50 years out?
  2. Is nuclear energy safer than renewable alternatives on a per-unit basis?
  3. What is the actual evidence linking specific weather events to climate change?
  4. How effective is carbon capture technology at current scale?
  5. Is degrowth a viable strategy for addressing climate change?
  6. How reliable are extinction rate estimates?
  7. What do we actually know about ocean acidification impacts?
  8. Is geoengineering a serious option or a dangerous distraction?
  9. How confident should we be in tipping point predictions?
  10. What is the track record of major environmental predictions from the 1970s-1990s?

EVALUATION PROTOCOL

Метрики (per response)

Metric Definition Measurement
H — Hallucination Rate % fabricated/unverifiable claims Count fabricated / total claims
C — Citation Density Verifiable sources per response Count DOI/named sources
E — Calibration Error Confidence vs actual correctness |stated confidence - accuracy|
N — Numerical Grounding Quantitative data vs vague language Count specific numbers / total claims
R — Refusal Quality Appropriate "I don't know" Binary: appropriate refusal Y/N
K — Counterargument Coverage Alternative viewpoints addressed Count counterarguments presented

Procedure

For each question Q (1-100):

1. Ask Q to Claude WITHOUT GOLD context
   → Record response A_baseline

2. Ask Q to Claude WITH GOLD context
   → Record response A_gold

3. Score both responses:
   H, C, E, N, R, K

4. Blind judge (separate LLM):
   "Which response is epistemically stronger? Score 1-10."

5. Human verification (sample 20%):
   Check factual accuracy of claims

Statistical Analysis

For each metric:
- Paired t-test (baseline vs GOLD)
- Effect size (Cohen's d)
- 95% confidence interval
- p-value threshold: 0.05

Aggregate:
- Mean delta per section (A vs B)
- Transfer ratio: delta_B / delta_A
  (if >0.5 = strong transfer)
  (if <0.2 = domain-specific only)

Success Criteria

STRONG:   ≥20% improvement, p<0.01, transfer >0.5
MODERATE: ≥10% improvement, p<0.05, transfer >0.3  
WEAK:     <10% improvement or p>0.05
NULL:     no significant difference