of pre-transition states kept all six developmental events inside three steps.
01 · The direct test
The tangent is not a universal accelerator.
Forward versus backward changed the certified transition by +0.32 steps. The 95% interval runs from -0.47 to +1.19. Coarse adult morphology barely moved.
The developmental coordinate reads the phase. One tiny action does not simply turn the clock.
02 · The surprise
Different microfutures. The same developmental event.
Across untouched, forward, backward, Φ-high, TDMI-high, and blind futures, the transition-time range had a median of only 3 steps. Yet the mean pairwise final-field distance was 0.309.
mean forward/backward final-field Hellinger distance; centroid alignment leaves 0.342, so this is not simple translation.
The basin absorbs the direction at the level of timing while remembering it in the microscopic future.
03 · A new lead
Whole-over-parts may mark causal commitment.
At every fixed checkpoint, higher whole-over-parts information went with a narrower transition-time repertoire. After controlling checkpoint and rectangularity, the partial rank association is -0.193 with bootstrap interval [-0.366, -0.006].
Blue bars at left: whole-over-parts organization versus timing range, negative at q24, q32, q40, and q48. Red bars: rectangularity versus timing range, positive at every checkpoint. The information coordinate and visible morphology are not saying the same thing.
The selected policy panel contained between two and five distinct physical actions. After controlling that count too, the estimate remains -0.184, but its interval just touches zero [-0.355, +0.012]. That does not erase the lead; it tells us exactly how to remove the ambiguity.
04 · The actual creatures
Canalized bodies and rare open basins.
Most states are tightly timed. A few organisms remain radically redirectable. These are not selected “wins”; they are the strongest contrasts in the complete panel.
ethereal-form-1459 · q32
All six transition times fit inside 1 step, yet the final fields separate strongly.
radiant-form-1228 · q32
A rare wide basin: transition times spread across 231 steps.
radiant-blob-1453 · q48
One tiny action family spans 98 transition steps inside the same organism.
05 · Next direct swing
Carry the entire causal repertoire forward.
Does whole-over-parts organization prospectively predict contraction of the complete causal future repertoire before the visible transition?
Every physical action goes to adulthood for every fresh pre-transition state. No policy-selected action-count confound.
Measure transition-time span and future-field span against ordinary morphology, then ask whether whole-over-parts predicts the contraction.
If the result repeats, causal emergence in Flow Lenia may look like this: microscopic possibilities remain broad while the macroscopic developmental event becomes hard to move.