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experiments/001_flux_familiar/hypothesis.md

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+# Experiment 001 Hypothesis
+
+## Primary hypothesis
+
+The same deterministic signal distinctions that were irrelevant in Experiment 000 will become understandable and generative when they directly determine a visible object's trajectory.
+
+## Competing explanations
+
+1. Embodied consequence makes timing, direction, accumulation, and cycles worth reasoning about.
+2. Motion improves legibility but produces only a conventional finite routing puzzle.
+3. The signal language remains too limited to sustain curiosity regardless of presentation.
+4. Direct physical manipulation would be enjoyable, but graph construction adds too much indirection or work.
+5. A cared-about world is still missing; a puck-like familiar is only an animated oscilloscope.
+
+## Strong evidence
+
+- The player changes a route after it already completes, because another trajectory seems worth creating.
+- Visible motion causes a prediction, surprise, revised mental model, and another test.
+- The player deliberately exploits periodicity, phase, storage, or recirculation.
+- The player chooses another constellation without being prompted by progression rewards.
+
+## Weak or negative evidence
+
+- Completion is fast and followed by the same sense that nothing remains.
+- The familiar is treated as a cursor and the network as awkward controls.
+- Random or noisy output eventually succeeds without understanding.
+- A single universal controller handles every constellation with trivial changes.
+