Emergent Causal Delay from Update-Limited Dynamics in a Discrete Conservative Substrate

This paper presents Gravitype V5. 0, a foundations-level study investigating how causal delay can emerge from update-limited dynamics in a discrete, conservative substrate. Rather than assuming time, mass, or geometry as primitives, the framework treats time operationally as relaxation effort—the number of stochastic update attempts required for accepted change under frustration-dependent resistance. The work introduces and carefully distinguishes two operational capacities: the capacity-to-update (κₚ), defined as the acceptance fraction of update attempts, and the capacity-to-relax (κ_ΔH), defined as accepted frustration reduction per attempt. Using these definitions, the paper demonstrates that spatial variation in κₚ can arise only when localized frustration and conservative transport are both present, as shown through a three-way null experiment. A central contribution is an executed falsification test (F1) designed to isolate causal delay without invoking geometric assumptions. Using paired-seed, non-synthetic simulations and a pre-registered Wilcoxon signed-rank test (N = 20), the study finds statistically significant delay when propagation traverses a κₚ-suppressing region. To eliminate ambiguity associated with saturated endpoint counts, an artifact-corrected onset observable (τfirstₐny) is introduced and used to verify that observed delays are not artifacts of detector heterogeneity or sampling protocol. The paper is deliberately conservative in scope. It does not derive spacetime geometry, field equations, or equivalence-principle behavior. Instead, it establishes a minimal, falsifiable substrate-level mechanism by which causal delay can arise from non-equilibrium update dynamics. These results are intended to serve as a disciplined foundation for subsequent work exploring how such capacity gradients might coarse-grain into continuum gravitational descriptions.