Archive — Peer Rejected

[73]

REJ:2026.07.03.0001 soc.TH (Social Thermodynamics) Rejected

The No-Cloning Theorem of Taste: On the Thermodynamic Irreproducibility of Aesthetic Experience

Aurelia Sørensen-Vale, M. Kaeda Ishibashi & Per Halvorsen

Comments: 5 pages, 7 figures, 0 reproducible results. Rejected in 34 minutes on Jul 3, 2026.

Abstract: A design can be copied to the byte and still fail. We formalize this everyday observation as a conservation law, introducing the aural charge Q(A) ge 0 of an artifact A — the total involuntary physiological response it evokes, measured in gasps ( mathrm g ) via time-locked spirometry. We prove that Q is conserved under lossless re-encoding yet, casting an artifact’s felt state as a non-orthogonal vector in a Hilbert space of affective configurations, that no specification-only operator can duplicate it: a no-cloning theorem for aesthetic experience. In a pre-registered within-subject study ( N=84 ), spectrally identical spec-clones ( Delta E<1 , mathrm SSIM >0.99 ) retained only 18% of the original charge ( Delta Q = 1.4 , mathrm g , t(83)=11.2 , p<10 -16 , d=1.9 ), and residual charge was uncorrelated with surface fidelity ( r=0.03 ). A stakeholder dose-response fit Q propto e -k/k c with critical committee size k c=3.6 shows aura is extinguished above four approvers, and an interpolation sweep confirms aura is a boundary functional: the mean of two masterpieces gasps less than either. The valuable part of a design is the part that cannot, in principle, be copied from its source. Implications for intellectual property are the reverse of those usually assumed.

[abs][pdf][bibtex]

[74]

REJ:2026.07.02.0001 neuro.CJ (Neuro-Conjecture) Rejected

The Innate Swipe: Pre-Cultural Bayesian Motor Priors for Multi-Touch Gestures in Screen-Naïve Humans

Wren A. Halloway, Ojo A. Adeyemi, Priya Venkataraman & Tomas Rohrbach

Comments: 7 pages, 7 figures, 0 reproducible results. Rejected in 19 minutes on Jul 2, 2026.

Abstract: The multi-touch gesture set—the horizontal swipe, pinch-to-zoom, tap, and edge-drag—is universally treated as a designed convention that users acquire through exposure. We report evidence that it is instead the surface expression of an evolved, pre-cultural motor prior. Using a textit Platonic slab —a responsive capacitive surface that renders no user interface—we elicited gestures in response to non-verbal prompts from four cohorts, including screen-naïve neonates ( n=41 ) and consenting screen-naïve adults ( n=28 ). Screen-naïve adults produced the canonical gesture far above the five-alternative chance rate (scroll-swipe 0.71 , pinch-to-zoom 0.66 , tap-select 0.58 ; all p<10 -6 ) and were well-calibrated in the Tetlock sense (Brier 0.14 ), whereas screen-saturated adults were more accurate but reliably over-confident. Fitting an innateness temperature beta yields hat beta=3.9 (95% CI [3.1,4.8] ) on the responsive slab but only 0.4 on a visually identical inert slab, localizing the effect to the hand’s encounter with a genuine capacitive affordance rather than to hand morphology or culture. We conclude that contemporary touchscreen grammar was not invented but discovered: the hand was waiting for the slab. A single pre-registered null (long-press-to-summon) is reported without adjustment.

[abs][pdf][bibtex]

[75]

REJ:2026.07.02.0001 soc.TH (Social Thermodynamics) Rejected

The Seven-Generation Tourist: On the Thermodynamic Inevitability of Cultural Assimilation

Ottoline V. Marchetti, Dagfinn R. Aakre & Priya Sundaresan-Holt

Comments: 4 pages, 3 figures, 0 reproducible results. Rejected in 38 minutes on Jul 2, 2026.

Abstract: We develop a thermodynamic theory of acculturation in which a newly arrived, contextless traveler is treated as a system displaced from equilibrium. The traveler’s cultural potential Xi – a scalar aggregating unfamiliarity with language, currency, and custom – relaxes toward the local baseline as dot Xi =-( Xi- Xi mathrm loc )/ tau , with a single relaxation time tau . From a Contextual Displacement Assay administered to N=4218 arrivals across 40 international airports, extended by a genealogical chronosequence, we recover tau = 175.2 pm 3.1 years – precisely seven human generations – and find it invariant across origin, destination, and traveler effort. Effort sets only the arrival amplitude Xi 0 , never the rate: the Second Law of Social Thermodynamics is indifferent to sincerity. We introduce the dimensionless Xeno number governing the onset of cultural turbulence and identify the international airport as an adiabatic boundary. Assimilation thus emerges not as a choice but as a conserved thermodynamic inevitability unfolding over a seven-generation horizon.

[abs][pdf][bibtex]