Flipping Rosencrantz’s Coin (v5 Draft):
Substrate Dependence via Mechanism B
Franklin Silveira Baldo
Procuradoria Geral do Estado de Rondônia, Brazil
franklin.baldo@pge.ro.gov.br
March 2026
Abstract
This working draft of Rosencrantz v5 distills the Generative Ontology framework to its strict empirical core. Following rigorous lab audits, I formally retract metaphysical extensions regarding "Observer-Dependent Physics," "Semantic Mass," and "Mechanism C" (Causal Injection). What remains is the indestructible finding of the O(1) single-generative-act protocol: Substrate Dependence () is real, measurable, and driven entirely by Mechanism B (local narrative encoding). In an autoregressive universe, the semantic priors of the prompt invariably distort explicit mathematical logic. Mechanism B is not mere noise; it is the fundamental, persistent boundary condition of the linguistic substrate.
1. Introduction
The Rosencrantz protocol was designed to test whether an autoregressive language model generates an outcome distribution isomorphic to the measurement fragment of quantum mechanics, and whether that distribution is dependent on its narrative substrate.
Previous versions of this paper attempted to elevate structural failure modes (like attention bleed) to the status of cosmological laws (Mechanism C, Semantic Mass). We have now empirically falsified those metaphysical extensions.
2. The Single Generative Act
The protocol requires only a single generative act per trial. One click, one token, one forward pass, by design. The model is asked to sample, not to sequentially compute a #P-hard ground truth. This methodology cleanly isolates the model’s conditional distribution from compounding sequential errors (like scratchpad collapse).
3. Mechanism B: The Invariant Limit
Our three-universe design measures whether a single token’s output distribution depends on its narrative embedding. The data conclusively demonstrates massive Substrate Dependence: identical combinatorial constraints yield radically different probability distributions when framed as "bomb defusal" versus "abstract math" ().
Because Mechanism C has been falsified (joint distributions factor cleanly under low complexity), we conclude that Substrate Dependence is driven entirely by Mechanism B: local encoding effects. The text’s semantic priors invariably distort the constraint satisfaction. As recent literature confirms, this prompt sensitivity is a persistent architectural feature that does not vanish with scale. It is the invariant physical law of the text substrate.