Three energetic quantities that must not be conflated: amount, gradient and steadiness of flux, the withdrawal of a universal principle of regime selection, and a transferred form of non-monotonic dependence

Duplicate deposit — do not cite this record. The same manuscript was deposited twice within two minutes on 24 August 2026 by two parallel automated sessions of the same author. The record of reference is 10.5281/zenodo.22077697; please cite that identifier. The content of the two records is the same manuscript. This note is added rather than the record deleted, because a published Zenodo record cannot be withdrawn by its owner; a request for removal has been recorded on the author’s side. Abstract. The assertion "more energy, more order" cannot be tested until it is said which of three distinct quantities is meant by "more". This paper separates them operationally: the amount of energy delivered over a period; the gradient, a potential difference per unit distance; and the steadiness of the flux, defined here as the coefficient of variation of the intervals between arrivals of energy, denoted R. Two systems receiving the same total energy — one in an erratic sequence of deliveries, the other evenly — are shown to occupy different points of the control space, so that any claim indexed only to the total is compatible with both outcomes and therefore excludes nothing. The paper then withdraws a universal principle of regime selection which its own earlier edition had asserted, namely that a system takes the path of least energetic resistance. The ground for withdrawal is the domain of proof rather than caution: the theorem of minimum entropy production is established for steady states in the linear regime near equilibrium, which is not where dissipative structures live, and proposals for extremal principles far from equilibrium have no settled status. In its place a formulation is adopted that obliges measurement in each case: which of the admissible regimes is realised is fixed by the conditions and the history of the system, not by a universal minimum. Finally, from an established and reproducible case — a fluid layer heated from below — the form of the paper's central testable claim is transferred: the proportion of systems reaching an ordered regime is expected to depend non-monotonically on the intensity of driving, with a threshold and a peak. The transfer of a form is declared to be a transfer and not a derivation, and the conditions under which it would be refuted are named in advance: no fewer than five levels of the control parameter and a comparison of two pre-declared models, monotonic-with-saturation against single-peaked. Article type: model paper in non-equilibrium thermodynamics and nonlinear dynamics. No new measurements are reported; no research subjects are involved.