Abrupt “on/off” behavior is frequently interpreted as evidence of underlying ontological discontinuity. This technical note proposes a structural clarification: in systems mediated by finite interfaces, apparent binarity may arise as a consequence of induced metric organization rather than as a property of the underlying domain itself. When a finite discriminative interface maps a domain into a reduced representational space, non-injectivity, compression, and resolution limits may generate sharp observational regime boundaries. Continuous variations in the underlying domain may therefore appear discontinuous within the accessible metric space. The note distinguishes between: ontological discontinuity (a genuine structural change in the underlying system), and observational binarity (a discontinuity in accessible representation induced by finite interface geometry). The aim is methodological rather than ontological. The analysis introduces a diagnostic filter for interpreting regime shifts without presupposing intrinsic discontinuities in the underlying domain. No domain-specific claims are made; the clarification applies at the level of structural description.
Danilo Tavella (2026) studied this question.