A Phase Transition in Research Processes Induced by Evaluation Delay: Structural Reconfiguration of Judgment Placement in Human–AI Collaboration

This work presents a structural analysis of human–AI collaborative research processes,focusing on how the timing of evaluation and judgment placement induces qualitativephase transitions in exploration. Rather than optimizing performance metrics or proposing future predictions,the paper examines the structural survivability of exploration itself.When irreversible evaluation is applied too early, exploratory processes collapse:alternatives are eliminated, option spaces shrink, and high-dimensional reasoningcannot be sustained. By contrast, delaying evaluation beyond a critical thresholdpreserves independent hypotheses, maintains option space growth, and enablesstable high-dimensional reasoning. The analysis…