The Law of Observation: Irreversible Constraint Pruning as the Physical Basis of Observation

Attempts to quantify emergent pre-particle structures in dynamical fields reveal a universal
constraint: successful quantification irreversibly eliminates incompatible configurations. This
work elevates that empirical constraint to a general physical principle.
Observation is defined not as an act or postulate, but as a physical condition arising when
irreversible constraints prune ensembles of admissible histories. A local constraint density is
introduced, and a minimal survival functional is motivated using large-deviation principles.
Lifetime-resolved simulations of dissipative lattice fields demonstrate selective survival, non-
Gaussian lifetime distributions, resolution-dependent lifetime cutoffs, and robustness under wide
parameter variation. Ongoing high-resolution and long-time studies probe whether breakdown,
if it exists, is controlled by global resolution or accumulated evolution time rather than local
parameters.

Keywords: quantum foundations, emergent gravity, irreversible processes, mea-
surement problem, constraint satisfaction