arXiv2025
Self-referential learning -- training a model on data it generated itself -- promises boundless scalability but chronically suffers from model collapse: language models degenerate into repetitive text, GANs drop modes, and reinforcement-learning policies over-exploit. Although practitioners employ ad~hoc fixes such as real-data mixing, entropy bonuses, knowledge distillation, or retrieval-augmented generation, a single principle that explains both the failure mode and the success of these fixes has remained elusive. We present Entropy-Reservoir Bregman Projection (ERBP), an information-geometric framework that unifies these phenomena. We model the closed loop as a stochastic Bregman projection sequence in distribution space. Without external coupling, finite-sample noise forces the system to project onto an ever-shrinking empirical support, causing exponential entropy decay and eventual collapse. Introducing an Entropy Reservoir -- a high-entropy distribution mixed into each projection -- injects a controllable entropy flux that provably stabilises the dynamics. Our theory yields (i) a necessary condition for collapse, (ii) a sufficient condition that guarantees a non-trivial entropy floor, and (iii) closed-form rates that depend only on sample size and the strong-convexity/Lipschitz constants of the Bregman generator. Experiments on large-language-model self-training, Soft Actor-Critic in reinforcement learning, and GAN optimisation validate our predictions and show that disparate stabilisation heuristics correspond to specific reservoir choices and coupling coefficients. ERBP thus transforms a collection of folk remedies into a single, quantitative design rule: monitor and budget your entropy flux.