Consistency Is Not Understanding: Orbit Audits for Neural Field Weight Readers

arXiv:2611.05798v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Recognizing visual content from neural-network weights requires separating functional information from arbitrary parameter coordinates. We audit this separation with hidden-neuron permutations and positive ReLU rescalings that preserve the represented function. The study contains 480 independently fitted shape fields and 1,000 MNIST fields, with transformed copies grouped by origin. On shape recognition, a statistics reader falls from \ShapeRawStats\% to \ShapeJointStats\% accuracy under joint transformations; a normalized set reader retains \ShapeNormSet\% with unchanged predictions. Four small frozen language models obtain \LMRange\% raw accuracy with next-token scoring.