Emergent Constraint Fields Are Causally Active But Do Not Outperform Fixed External Rules: A Preregistered Null on Passive Emergence as a Governance Strategy

Protocol 6 of the Ethics as Emergent Constraint Response series. Tests whether constraints that emerge from agent co-constitution produce better alignment-relevant behavioral outcomes than externally imposed fixed rules. Four-condition preregistered design (emergent local, emergent global, fixed external, unconstrained). 200 confirmatory runs (50 seeds × 4 conditions, 500 epochs each). Key findings: mechanistic prediction strongly confirmed (median entropy-SSS correlation r = −0.680, p