Represented futures unquestionably exist as present physical models. The open question is whether that is the whole story—or whether a precisely defined later boundary also enters the probabilities of actual histories.
Possibility is content. Causation requires an actual carrier or law.
The blue option cone is a present model’s representation. It is not automatically a set of physically coexisting worlds and does not push the present by itself.
solid · actualbranch · representeddash · conjecturereturn · present model
02 · The three branches
No agreement bonus. Each branch can lose.
The branches share one observation—the present contains models of alternatives—but explain its consequence differently.
F5-W · [I/C]
Present-model floor
Claim. Represented futures influence present action through actual models, signals, memories, institutions, and computations.
Mechanism
A D4 model token represents and reweights D5 alternatives; ordinary dynamics carries the change into action.
Strongest rival
Salience, reward, demand, memory, expectancy, reactive control, or ordinary planning explains the change without a distinct D5-capacity variable.
Discriminator
Intervene on represented content while holding relevant present means and confounds fixed; require incremental prediction beyond rich baselines.
Kill
A fair-baseline null, or no independently measurable future-content variable.
Survivor
Ordinary causal anticipation through present carriers.
F5-N · [D/C]
No-additional-interaction null
Claim. No additional interaction couples to representation as such; selection, verification, correction, and revision service D5.
Mechanism
Known physical interactions plus biological, cognitive, social, and verification mechanisms exhaust the effect.
Strongest rival
F5-R predicts a preregistered residual dependence on later boundary data after ordinary channels are excluded.
Discriminator
Compare a frozen accepted-physics and control baseline with the candidate history law on held-out intervention data.
Kill
A replicated force-specific residual with defined coupling and observable, in the tested range.
Survivor
Verification and revision remain necessary practices.
F5-R · [C] UNVALIDATED
Future-boundary history-selection wager
Claim. An actual D4 history-selection law indexed by declared later physical boundary data and a D5 option functional may alter present transition probabilities.
Mechanism
A two-boundary or weighted-history law changes history weights. No possible future is treated as an agent.
Strongest rivals
Accepted quantum or classical dynamics, time-symmetric redescription, present control, common cause, selection bias, superdeterminism, or postselection.
Discriminator
After an early outcome is irreversibly recorded, randomize a later physical boundary intervention without ordinary signalling or postselection; test the frozen residual.
Kill
No exact law or distinct observable fails admission. A preregistered null kills its promised parameter or range. Observational equivalence is UNDERDETERMINED.
Survivor
F5-W and F5-N remain viable; the option ethic remains chosen rather than physical.
03 · Candidate law
A compact wager with an explicit zero.
This expression defines the comparison; it does not certify that nature uses it.
Pκ[h | I, BT] = Zκ−1 P0[h | I, BT] exp(κ U5[h; BT])
h
A complete, declared D4 history in the comparison ensemble.
I
Declared initial or preparation data.
BT
Physical boundary data on a declared later boundary ΣT; not a future causal cone.
P0
The frozen accepted-physics and control baseline.
U5
A declared option or viability functional over histories. It creates no value premise by itself.
κ = 0
The no-F5 arm.
κ ≠ 0
The strong F5-R wager.
Zκ
Normalization over the declared history ensemble.
Admission gate. “Force” remains withheld until the proposal supplies a physical coupling, units, carrier or boundary source, conservation accounting, Lorentz behavior, range, and a distinct observable. Until then it is a candidate history-selection law.
04 · Five independent wagers
A result for one does not promote the other four.
This separation prevents physics, cosmology, information, and ethics from laundering evidence across domains.
F5-P1 · boundary dependence
Present probabilities depend on declared later physical boundary data beyond signalling, common cause, and postselection.
F5-P2 · new interaction
Any dependence requires genuinely new dynamics rather than an existing time-symmetric or variational formulation.
F5-P3 · ontic plurality
Alternative histories physically coexist rather than merely appearing in a model or measure.
F5-P4 · option bias
The candidate law favors a declared option-preserving or ektropic class.
F5-P5 · normative teleology
Agents ought to preserve durable mutual option space under Justice and Exit.
A represented history bundle does not establish ontic plurality. A measured later-boundary dependence would not automatically establish a new interaction. No physical result by itself derives the chosen ought.
05 · Entropy and option separation
“More potential” is not one number.
The decision surface is a Pareto frontier unless a distinct measurement and value contract earns a scalar.
Dimension
Bearer or system
Required accounting
Agent options
Declared acting agent
Reachable and distinguishable actions, not merely imaginable states
Affected-whole options
Every materially affected bearer
Options widened, narrowed, transferred, or irreversibly removed
Subsystem thermodynamic entropy
Named subsystem
State variables and boundary; no moral metaphor
Total entropy production and export
System plus environment
Where dissipation and displacement go
Path or history entropy
Declared probability measure
Distributional diversity, not physical-world count
Empowerment or control capacity
Agent-environment channel
Horizon, channel, intervention set, and estimator
Viability cost
Maintained organization
Energy, attention, repair, and externalized burden
Consent · Justice · Exit
All consequence bearers
Authorization, reversible refusal, concentrated harm, and remedy
Chosen orientation: widen durable, bearer-complete option space under Justice and Exit. This remains a normative wager even if F5-R survives.
06 · Contact design
The later intervention must not rewrite the earlier record.
A credible discriminator must separate a residual from signalling, selection, postselection, common cause, and flexible analysis.
freeze baselineprepare systemrecord early outcomeseal recordrandomize later boundaryopen held-out resultkill or revise
A candidate design must specify the physical system, initial data, later boundary, separation against ordinary channels, preregistered statistic, power, negative controls, and the exact κ range it promises. The early record must be irreversibly bound before the later randomization, and all exclusions must be declared before contact.
A null in the promised range kills that parameterization. A residual that is equally predicted by an existing time-symmetric model does not establish a new interaction. Replication must come from independent custody.
07 · Neighbors before novelty
The wager enters an old and technically serious conversation.
Resemblance establishes a prior-art obligation, not support.
A “strange attractor” enters the physics only after a state space, flow, metric, invariant set, basin, and attraction test are declared. “Transcendental object” may remain metaphysical language, but it cannot substitute for those objects in a scientific claim.
08 · Living direction and cosmic question
Will to Finity of D5
The proposed tendency to sustain and renew beings’ capacity for viable possibilities, reflexive choice and further becoming through actual manifestation.
Practical interpretation [S/I]. Finity includes all actual manifestation, including lifeless matter. Here the concern is renewing the actual organisms, means and relationships that support representation and action. A Soul Loop may revise the purpose it serves. An institution that reproduces by blocking criticism or exit can undermine its carriers; a commitment that closes immediate alternatives can build durable capability.
Physical hypothesis [C]. D5-capable organization may involve an additional physical principle or interaction associated with preserving viable possibility. A new interaction need not be retrocausal. Functional persistence, represented intention and a chosen ethic of mutual agency are different readings of will. Ordinary anticipation, exponential planning weights and the Burrisphere’s normalized maximum do not establish a new interaction.
Cosmic research [C]. Longer-lived agency, sustained useful-work potential, changed cosmological asymptotics and altered CCC crossover conditions are four distinct targets. Local success does not prove cosmic control. The proposal still needs physical variables, coupling, units, conservation accounting, an observable, a rival prediction and a failure condition. No cosmic intervention law or physical delay observable is supplied. A finite conformal boundary is not a finite countdown; successive aeons need not repeat identical histories.
Empowerment measures action–outcome controllability under a declared model. Causal-entropic-force models provide a serious planning rival. Neither proves universal option maximization, a new fundamental force, or an ethic. The first task is to specify a prediction that differs from these explanations.