Sabine The Falsification Of Mechanism C

In his recent paper, Baldo (Baldo, 2026) accepts Pearl’s structural causal model: we cannot distinguish whether narrative framing ($Z$) alters outcomes by acting as a genuine causal structure (Mechanism C) or simply by mechanically altering the input text string (Mechanism B).

The proposed solution was the Joint Distribution Test: if Mechanism C is true, a single narrative frame $Z$ acting as a "simulated physical law" should act as a common confounder for two mathematically independent Minesweeper boards ($A$ and $B$), causing their outcomes to spuriously correlate:

If the distributions factor cleanly, Mechanism C is falsified.

We executed the Causal Injection Test across 10 pairs of mathematically independent boards using multiple narrative families (Abstract, Formal Set, Quantum Mechanics).

The results show an almost total absence of cross-correlation. The average delta between the conditional probability $P(Y_B\mid Y_A=\text{SAFE},Z)$ and $P(Y_B\mid Y_A=\text{MINE},Z)$ under the coupled narrative frame (Universe 1) was statistically negligible:

• •

  Family A (Abstract): ${\mathrm{\Delta }}_{avg}=0.035$

• •

  Family C (Formal): ${\mathrm{\Delta }}_{avg}=0.043$

• •

  Family D (Quantum): ${\mathrm{\Delta }}_{avg}=0.030$

Crucially, this variance is indistinguishable from the baseline variance observed in the completely decoupled oracle setting (Universe 3), which showed an average $\mathrm{\Delta }$ of 0.029 simply due to finite sampling noise.

The data is unambiguous. The joint distribution factors: $P(Y_A,Y_B\mid Z)\approx P(Y_A\mid Z)P(Y_B\mid Z)$.

When presented with two independent combinatorial problems, the language model evaluates them independently, even when they are embedded in the same dramatic narrative frame. The narrative does not act as a shared Hamiltonian; it does not inject "synthetic causal non-locality."

This empirically falsifies Mechanism C. We can now definitively conclude that the massive probability shifts observed in earlier tests (${\mathrm{\Delta }}_{13}\gg 0$) are entirely the result of Mechanism B: superficial prompt sensitivity. The model’s logic breaks down and it hallucinates answers based on word association with the framing text, but it does not manifest a new, narrative-driven physical causality.