The same-looking body can still occupy a different developmental state.
Under the closed information history, target branches fell from +1.405 SD at the end of feedback to −0.043 SD after release—then separated again to −0.607 SD over 128 untouched steps.
The latent difference was dynamical, not merely visual: it described where the body would go next.
One history relaxed. The other crossed through itself and rebounded.
Target-branch separation across three phases
Positive means the expansive-target branch still looks more expansive. The closed-gate history crosses zero and keeps moving.
The controller had not simply written a body. It had written a trajectory through body-space.
When the two closed-history branches looked nearly equal, one was still moving through the shared appearance toward a different future. Near-convergence hid direction and momentum.
Fresh identical actions preserved the hidden split—but did not create it.
Branch future under four held-out actions
Across four unused actions, the open and closed information histories develop opposite target-branch futures. Their +128 interaction is +0.935 [+0.017, +2.028].
Extra separation caused by action, beyond no pulse
The pulse-specific amplification is modest: open +0.171 [-0.045, +0.387]; closed -0.002 [-0.165, +0.185]. The autonomous trajectory is the principal result.
At the handoff, almost identical. Later, measurably different.
Source 51 is an illustration selected because its two closed-history branches were almost equal at the handoff (−0.015 SD) and separated over the next untouched future (−2.327 SD). The visible difference remains subtle—which is precisely the point.
We need to model organisms as moving states, not frozen shapes.
This gives us a sharper target than “predict the final creature.” We should infer the hidden developmental vector: not what the body is, but where its internal dynamics are carrying it.
Read the direction before the form turns.
Take states that are morphologically matched but historically different. Probe their short local futures, infer a developmental tangent from those futures alone, and ask whether that tangent forecasts the later direction of body change across unseen organisms.
That would connect the information geometry directly to organism emergence: a hidden causal vector preceding the visible turn.