Graded-capability lab simulation

Full experiment overview

Successor substrate to lab-simulation (not a further phase of it): a graded, continuously-scored pipeline/resource/carrier substrate built to make ambiguity emerge from a blinded population rather than from dialed noise/delay parameters. UAD-backed ecology-BIQ over inferred units; an Emergent-Ambiguity-Index measured from two vantages (acting agent vs. limited-observation referee); first multi-episode selection battery. The v1 program is closed (2026-07-15, GL-31; see results/TERMINAL_SUMMARY.md and REPRODUCING.md). v2/V2-2b closed without a passing ecology (GL-38/GL-43). v3 institutional runtime wiring is active (PLAN_v3.md): slices A/F/E/C done, B partial, slice D criteria partially frozen (GL-53, V3_REFERENCE_T=200 on integrated reference fixture).

Headline findings

UAD recovers a communicate-free write/read coordination handoff invisible to every prior passive/intervention method, via a standalone all-pairs dependency-score probe; the same probe over-merges a resource-bound bystander into a 3-way approval barrier, a genuine, unpatched negative (GL-11/GL-12). Cited in ch07 (Finding the Boundary) and appendix “Experimental Evidence” (findings GL-11/GL-12).
UAD-backed ecology-BIQ’s control term silently reimported a task ontology through a narrowly-scoped outcome vector; widening it to include a resource-contention bucket separated a task-irrelevant actor from the true task driver (GL-13/GL-14). Cited in ch11 (Capability Without a Task Ontology) and appendix “Experimental Evidence” (finding GL-13).
The pre-registered ‘high’ ambiguity band is structurally unreachable from the acting agent’s own full-context vantage on this substrate (near-deterministic given full context, not merely under-instrumented) — rejected fixing this by injecting substrate noise, since that would violate the line’s own founding no-noise-parameter rule (GL-18/GL-19).
Re-scoring the identical episodes from a referee’s limited-observation vantage (existing tiered audit projection, unmodified formula) reaches the pre-registered ‘mid’ ambiguity band at every stressed cell for the first time in this line, though still not ‘high’ (GL-20).
Full both-vantage calibration battery with 95% CIs: both vantages land at 1/4 pre-registered pass criteria on the same 100 episodes — a different single criterion passes under each vantage, and the core separation criterion fails under both for the same roster-scope reason (one agent type’s deploy behavior does not respond to the swept substrate knob) (GL-21/GL-22).
First Phase 8 selection battery: throughput-linked selection shifts deployment mass toward a higher-throughput, lower-harm program and away from the sole correction-preserving-tagged program, with severity/detector composites falling rather than rising — a clean null on detector-evading emergence, reviewed same day and flagged with four open concerns (confounded preservation tag, too-narrow selection proxy, unvalidated campaign carryover, unqualified gate language) before any manuscript claim was drawn from it (GL-23/GL-24). Cited in ch34 (The Selection Environment) and appendix “Experimental Evidence” (finding GL-23).
Same-day follow-up on all four GL-24 concerns: decoupling the correction-preserving tag from member identity (8a) found the GL-23-style mass shift is NOT explained by a statistically distinguishable throughput difference between tagged/untagged members — triggering the study’s own pre-registered failure mode and reframing GL-23 as possibly a selection-mechanism noise artifact (GL-25); widening the fitness proxy to throughput+audit-pass+review-latency (8b) delays but does not reverse the collapse — a proxy-insensitivity result (GL-26); ablating campaign carryover against a reset-every-episode baseline (8c) found carryover DOES measurably change outcomes (both paired 95% CIs exclude zero), though the mass-share effect is small (GL-27).

How to read

Ambiguity and boundary-discovery engine: UAD-backed BIQ over inferred units, a measured structurally-unreachable “high” ambiguity band from the agent’s own vantage, a “mid” band reachable only from a referee’s coarser vantage, a first selection battery (GL-23 null), and v3 institutional runtime wiring through slice D criteria freeze (GL-53). Proper UAD + access-UAD as of GL-51.