The Serial Decoding Basin τ: Five Experiments on Convergence, Thermodynamic Anchoring, and the Geometry of Receiver-Limited Throughput

We present five reproducible experiments investigating whether serial decoding systems converge to a finite information parameter. Building on the rate-distortion floor and cross-substrate basin analysis established in companion papers, we demonstrate zero-free-parameter prediction of ribosome throughput (Δ = 0.0004 bits), Monte Carlo basin significance (90.5% vs 28.3%, p ≈ 0), evolutionary convergence to K ≈ 23 (within 2 of the genetic code's 21), asymptotic convergence of τ₂₁ = 4.16 ± 0.19 bits, and thermodynamic anchoring to kT with residual Δ = 0.003 bits. We argue τ is the centroid of a geometric constraint rather than a fundamental physical constant.