RESULT 42: crown-3 voided — slow-burn endgame instability accepted by hard guards; single-sided estimator = common factor in both 72M deaths; centered-as-armor hypothesis promoted

Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_014FAPDWQ49M5Ye3NpTndTpn

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@@ -568,6 +568,26 @@ direction), not training-under-fault; wave-2 = co-training with faults injected
 
 
 
+### RESULT 42 (2026-07-18): CROWN-3 VOIDED (user call) — slow-burn endgame instability the guards accepted; the SINGLE-SIDED estimator emerges as the common factor in both 72M deaths.
+User caught what skip-counting missed: gn rising / cos falling / CE rising from ~200k, spike at
+231.7k, partial recovery — RESULT 41's "zero guard events = healthy" reading RETRACTED.
+Forensics: bcap DID fire (beta 3e-3 -> 1.4e-3 @200k -> cap floor 1.5e-4 by 215k) but starvation
+cannot cure a state disease (ride-deadlock replay, this time with NO governor overshoot). The
+poison route: drift 0.25-0.32 updates ACCEPTED (hard threshold 0.5; only 2 skips) with garbage
+quality (cos as low as -0.76) at starved beta. sig peaked 483.
+PATTERN: original fw72m died 195k@1e-3; plain died ~200k@3e-3; cent sailed 234k@3e-3.
+Common factor across deaths = single-sided estimator late-phase, NOT the beta value.
+HYPOTHESIS (promoted): the single-sided O(beta) bias at large sigma*||J|| forms a positive
+feedback (bias -> sharpening -> larger bias); centered's symmetric read cancels that term =
+STABILITY ARMOR, not just CE polish. The 0.041 "discrepancy" and this death are one phenomenon.
+MISSED PROTECTION (my scheduling error): beta_sync and drift_adapt existed on the shelf
+(probe-validated) but were not given to the crown — "conservative" in the wrong dimension.
+drift-EMA was 0.006 -> a 12x wall (0.072) would have rejected every poison accept.
+ADJUDICATION IN FLIGHT: end_plain vs end_cent from clean s200000 (does single-sided sicken in
+15k endgame steps?) + bpmix 5-arm localization. CROWN-3b deferred until they land; candidate
+recipe: plain bulk + sync/drift-wall armor + CENTERED ENDGAME (est_late, meaning flipped).
+Ledger: the 72M crown remains fw72m_cent 3.3318 (gap 0.043); a 1.0x-cost crown DOES NOT EXIST yet.
+
 ### RESULT 41 (2026-07-18): CROWN-3 SEALED — fw72m_plain 3.3728 (gap 0.084 at 1.0x cost); a 0.041 plain-vs-cent discrepancy opens the ENDGAME question.
 fw72m_plain (from scratch, plain estimator, fixed bf_late 3e-3@20k, bcap defensive): 234k steps,
 best 3.3728, zero guard events. Ledger: BP twin 3.2884 | cent 3.3318 (gap 0.043) | plain 3.3728