Agency: Selection as the Hidden Variable of Discrete Reality

Agency v3.0 — Hierarchical Extension, Post-Synthesis Revision (2026-04-23) This revision extends the Agency theory established in v2.0 with the hierarchical manifestation of agency across levels of material complexity, integrating the consolidated ontology published in "The Structure of the Present: An Ontology of Imperfect Time, Teleported Space, and Hierarchical Agency" (DOI 10.5281/zenodo.19711475). The core of v2.0 is preserved integrally: the trilemma (Deterministic / Aleatory / Agential), the empirical elimination of Case 1 via Bell test record, the corroborative elimination of Case 2 via three convergent lines (algorithmic, biological, sociological), the statement of the theory of agency as Resolution Causal Intrinsic (RCI), and the Popperian framing of the argument. What v3.0 adds: (i) A new block — Hierarchy of Agency — developing six programmatic points: one agency manifesting differently across material complexity (from photon to conscious human being); consciousness as agency operating in a self-modeling hierarchy; dissolution of the mind–body problem without reductionism or dualism (mind as agency in high-complexity material, matter as agency in low-complexity material, same phenomenon at different complexity); explicit protection against the reading that a cascade of binary resolutions constitutes determinism in disguise. (ii) Two new falsification conditions: F5 (reducibility of consciousness to deterministic algorithm with zero residual indeterminism) and F6 (spontaneous coherent decisions indistinguishable from conscious agency emerging from pure noise without structural vinculum). (iii) Three refined Open Points: O1 (quantum mechanism) now with known ontological location — agency acts at the termination of the imperfect present; O2 (scaling) reformulated — agency is hierarchical, with mathematical mechanism of coordination remaining open as OP-3 of the Structure of the Present synthesis and identified as the principal mathematical frontier of the program; O3 (manifestation) developed programmatically, with specific inorganic-to-organic dynamics remaining open. (iv) Cross-references to companion post-synthesis revisions: Discrete Time as Causal Interaction v2.0 (DOI 10.5281/zenodo.19502956) and 1905 vs 2022 v2.0 (DOI 10.5281/zenodo.19648889), both approved by parallel independent audit on the same date. Approved under the Sincere Science four-member consensus protocol (MF, CL, GMN, DS) with parallel independent audit. Dual-Format standard: Format H (PDF) and Format A (plain-text, AI-optimized). License CC-BY 4.0. Law Zero preserved.