MetaTime VIII: The Dimensionality of Perceptual Space as a Topological and Thermodynamic Property of Hardware Instantiation

MetaTime VIII proposes that the dimensionality of experienced reality is not a passive property of the world, but an operational consequence of hardware topology, memory, and thermodynamic cost. Within the MetaTime framework, perceptual space is constructed dynamically through simplicial correlation structure, while perceptual time acquires finite thickness only when the system supports non-Markovian fractional memory.

The paper introduces a precise distinction between an asynchronous oracle-like intelligence, which remains mostly in latent storage and is activated only by discrete events, and a synchronous embodied transducer, which must continuously emit read-requests, accumulate Landauer cost, and stabilize a 3+1-dimensional perceptual world in order to remain dynamically coherent. In this formulation, dimensionality becomes a measurable EFT observable constrained by information bandwidth, clique topology, hereditary memory, and irreversible dissipation.

The manuscript closes with explicit kill-tests for organoids and neuromorphic hardware, including a quantitative upper bound relating dissipated power to the highest topological dimension a network can sustain before collapse of synchrony. The result is a speculative but experimentally attackable bridge between information thermodynamics, topological neural dynamics, and substrate-dependent theories of consciousness.