CodexGameDev/experiments/001_flux_familiar/hypothesis.md

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.