Fixing #2248

[irisliucy]

Fix #2248 by disabling validate_args.

[avnishn]

@irisliucy can you explain why validating the arguments to the constructor solves our issue?

I'm referencing this article:
https://praveen-palanisamy.github.io/blog/2018/04/22/pytorch-distributions-validate-args

but I'm not sure how correct it is or how this would fix our tests.
Also for some reason we fail pre-commit on your changes, and this probably is because some new functions were added to the torch.distribution interface, that are not being implemented.

[irisliucy]

@avnishn There was an issue (https://github.com/rlworkgroup/garage/runs/2045693049?check_suite_focus=true#step:5:255) failing github action earlier and @gitanshu also filed a similar issue for torch 1.8. It failed because of validate_args argument in torch.distribution.

[avnishn]

@irisliucy is there a way in which we can go to the tests, and then change the offending the parameters.

Unless there is a good reason to turn off validation of parameters, I think that we shouldn't go in this direction.

[ryanjulian]

According to https://pytorch.org/docs/stable/distributions.html validate_args can be slow which is why it can be turned off in the first place, so this isn't clear-cut.

My big question is, why were our args failing in the first place?

[ryanjulian]

Ah after having looked deeper, I think we should fix the root cause. Seems like not a hard fix. @avnishn can you please suggest the root cause fix? This is your code which is broken.