The Remote Observer "Pixel Paradox" of Cosmological Observation: A Thought Experiment Exploration of Light-Cone Assembly Bias

This preprint presents The Remote Observer “Pixel Paradox” of Cosmological Observation, a structured thought experiment developed to examine potential bias in remote cosmological inference arising from light-cone assembly effects. The framework retains standard weak-field General Relativity and introduces a bounded phenomenological functional f(r) over the density domain ρₘᵢₙ ≤ ρ(r) ≤ ρₘₐₓ. This functional serves as an altitude-dependent amplification of gravitational time-dilation contributions, enabling a controlled investigation of how observational reconstruction along the past light cone may distort inferred large-scale behavior. Its central quantity is the remote-observer distortion factor, Ξ(r) = vₒᵦₛ(r)⁄vₗₒcₐₗ(r) = 1 + δ(r)·f(r), which captures how signals originating in regions with different gravitational potentials, clock rates, and path lengths may be assembled into a single observational frame. Within this bounded caricature, the construction illustrates how light-cone assembly may exaggerate or mimic flat galactic rotation curves, generate expansion-like or acceleration-like observational trends, remain negligible in high-acceleration local regimes such as the Solar System, and produce scale-dependent reconstruction bias tied to density gradients. The manuscript does not propose a replacement cosmology. Rather, it isolates a methodological question: to what extent might the observational pipeline itself introduce structured, non-random bias into large-scale cosmological inference? Accordingly, the work is positioned as a diagnostic framework for epistemic risk in remote observation, rather than as an ontological claim about the underlying physical model. It is written as a controlled caricature probe of light-cone assembly bias: a transparent and internally consistent construction used to test whether some inferred large-scale phenomenology could be partially amplified or distorted by observer-side reconstruction effects. Connections are drawn to established phenomena including the Integrated Sachs–Wolfe effect, the Rees–Sciama effect, redshift-space distortions, gravitational lensing of the CMB, and cosmological backreaction. This Zenodo record corresponds to the version-specific preprint release.