Papers › Two Complementary Perspectives to Continual Learning: Ask Not Only What to Optimize,...
Two Complementary Perspectives to Continual Learning: Ask Not Only What to Optimize, But Also How
Timm Hess, Tinne Tuytelaars, Gido M. van de Ven
Recent years have seen considerable progress in the continual training of deep neural networks, predominantly thanks to approaches that add replay or regularization terms to the loss function to approximate the joint loss over all tasks so far. However, we show that even with a perfect approximation to the joint loss, these approaches still suffer from temporary but substantial forgetting when starting to train on a new task. Motivated by this 'stability gap', we propose that continual learning strategies should focus not only on the optimization objective, but also on the way this objective is optimized. While there is some continual learning work that alters the optimization trajectory (e.g., using gradient projection techniques), this line of research is positioned as alternative to improving the optimization objective, while we argue it should be complementary. In search of empirical support for our proposition, we perform a series of pre-registered experiments combining replay-approximated joint objectives with gradient projection-based optimization routines. However, this first experimental attempt fails to show clear and consistent benefits. Nevertheless, our conceptual arguments, as well as some of our empirical results, demonstrate the distinctive importance of the optimization trajectory in continual learning, thereby opening up a new direction for continual learning research.
In Syntology Open this paper in Syntology's Atlas, the map of the papers in Syntology's graph and their citations.
For agents, Syntology's MCP tool lists every function and class Syntology harvested from this paper and whether it ran (how to connect): get_harvested_code_for_paper(arxiv_id="2311.04898")
Code
Syntology Ran 9 of 9 code samples harvested from 1 repository linked to this paper; 0 have no recorded run. Of those that ran: 9 ran with no contract checked.
By repository: official repository: 9 samples from 1 repository, 9 ran. The run record, sample by sample. “Ran” means executed on a synthesized input, not that the code is correct or reproduces the paper.
Repository list and official/mentioned flags are the archive's, frozen 2025-07-28. Reachability, where shown, is from one Syntology probe window (2026-09-16 to 2026-09-18); repositories not probed show nothing. GitHub stars are not tracked.
Code Syntology ran Syntology
9 samples harvested; 9 ran; 0 honoured the contract we drafted; 0 have no recorded run. Read from Syntology's graph 2026-09-24; that is when this build read the record, not when the samples ran.
Licence: 0 of the 9 samples are pointer only, meaning Syntology does not serve that copy's text. This page shows no code text for any sample; each one links to its file in the repository.
Harvested from timmhess/twocomplementaryperspectivescl. “Ran” means the sample executed on a synthesized input. It does not mean the output is correct, and nothing here reproduces the paper's results. “Honoured” and “violated” refer to a contract Syntology drafted from the code itself; “our draft was wrong” and “fixture could not drive it” are failures of Syntology's instrument, not of the code.
Each sample ends with its code_sha256, Syntology's identity for that exact code. An agent fetches the stored sample with Syntology's MCP tool get_code(code_sha256="…") (how to connect); click an identity to copy that call.
Repository labels, per sample. official repository: The archive marks this repository official for the paper. named in the paper: The archive records that the paper mentions this repository; it is not marked official. community (archive-listed): In the archive's code links for this paper, not marked official and not recorded as mentioned in the paper. found in paper text by Syntology: Syntology found this repository in the paper's own text; whether it is the authors' implementation is not asserted. community: Not in the archive's code links for this paper; a community repository Syntology harvested. Samples from a repository marked official are listed first. Licence labels name the repository's licence as recorded at harvest. “Pointer only” means Syntology does not serve that copy's text, for one of four reasons: no licence file was found; the licence was not identified; the licence is recorded as permissive but that copy's record is not marked cleared; or the licence is outside the permissive list Syntology serves text under (MIT, Apache-2.0, BSD and similar). Some licences outside that list permit redistribution, such as WTFPL, and GPL-3.0 under its conditions; they are simply not on the list. Hover a licence label for the reason. File links open the file on GitHub at the default branch, which may have changed since the harvest.
16b9e00f007a0abf · report
baa60c6b90daab7c · report
4468c94aca4d060f · report
1c48b422727921a2 · report
667a50347702db96 · report
9bd77285b9ea9767 · report
c3dd6c1f097353b6 · report
551c67f1ad0c8a2c · report
d0dc299a23419623 · report
Tasks
Results from the paper archive 2025-07-28
No leaderboard rows for this paper in the archive.
Methods
Report a problem or propose a change · a person checks every report against the paper or source before anything changes; decisions are listed on /corrections