E0 — Empirical Grounding of Substrate Primitives via Toy Continua
E0 presents an empirical demonstration that minimal operational substrate primitives—asynchronous local updates, closure cycles, multi-channel mismatch, height, and tolerance —are sufficient to generate cohesion, divergence, boundaries, and threshold behavior in toy informational continua. This work establishes these primitives are operationally necessary and non-arbitrary, arising from minimal requirements for any substrate to exhibit coherent structure.
Key Demonstrations:
- Sharp threshold effects governed by , formation of cohesive and divergent regions, stable boundaries between domains
- Primitives arise naturally in simple substrates and produce nontrivial continuum-like behavior before higher-level phenomena (constructors, quantum structure) appear
- Substrates exhibit coherent regions, boundaries, and continuum-like behavior without constructors, self-repair, or quantum interference
- Primitives are necessary but not sufficient for constructors or quantum mechanics
Purpose: Grounds the operational apparatus and execution semantics used throughout Constructor Emergence (E1) and Quantum Emergence (E2) programs by demonstrating structure before function. Addresses circularity concern: these primitives are legitimate operational foundations, not assumptions chosen to make constructors or quantum structure work.
Scope: Does not demonstrate constructor emergence, quantum structure, or claim physical realism. Explores operational minimality: what minimal execution semantics are required for substrates to exhibit coherent structure at all?
Paper ID: CD-E0 | Series: E-series (Empirical Narrowing) | Status: Draft | Dependencies: None (foundational empirical work; provides foundation for E1, E2, Paper A, Paper B)