Two-channel instrument

Definition (canon)

Structural channel (configuration, read before and independent of events) + kinetic channel (event series). Model validated when the structural channel predicts the geometry and the kinetic channel confirms it.

As of the erratum, the discriminating work falls to the structural channel. The two geometries remain distinguishable before either resolves, but through structure, not through the statistics of the precursor events.

In plain words

Read how the thing is built first. Then watch how it behaves. Trust the first to say what it is and the second to confirm.

It is not

• A kinetic-only typing. The burst distribution is set jointly by the node's geometry and the coupling of the population around it, so distinct combinations look the same. That is an identifiability failure, and no amount of precision repairs it.

What would defeat it

• Canon, erratum. A hinge-typed model with scale-free precursors above the event-count floor; a mean-field cascade whose successive-round ratio departs from the linearised gain while bursts stay scale-free; a coupled population near gain one that does not produce scale-free bursts.