Poster Session 1 · Tuesday, 13 October 2026 · 7:30 pm · San Diego

The Internal Dynamics of Decisions: From rats and primates to AI

Brain, or AI model? Tell them apart by their dynamics.
Nathan M. Thornhill · Institute for Complexity Science and Advanced Computing (ICSAC), Fort Wayne, Indiana
🧠CORTEX · SETTLES INTO ITS OWN ATTRACTOR🖥AI MODEL · DRIVEN, NEVER SETTLES
Cortex settles into its own attractor. An AI model is driven and never settles.
The paperRead the preprintFull text, figures, and both pre-registrations. doi.org/10.20944/preprints202608.1095.v1 The testPlay the gameYou get a system’s dynamics. You call it: brain, or AI model? The recordReferencesEvery source behind the poster, with links. Who did thisBioIndependent researcher, Fort Wayne, Indiana.

Bio

Nathan M. Thornhill is an independent researcher working at the intersection of complexity science, information theory, and consciousness studies. His work asks a deceptively simple question: what separates systems that persist from those that don’t?

The Existence Threshold framework answers it through measurable information dynamics: integration, differentiation, and the balance between them. Applied to binary discrete systems, the criterion classified pattern persistence across ten cellular automata without error, and the same paper reports the boundary where it stops working. Crossing a dimensional boundary costs roughly 86% of a pattern’s information, measured over 1,500 patterns. That figure is a measurement at its stated parameters rather than a constant of nature, and his later work traces what makes it move.

The Dynamic Existence Threshold applies the same balance to system state rather than pattern persistence. It classifies states well, including sleep stages from EEG and task success from internal geometry on verifiable-output benchmarks. It is a coherence detector rather than a forecaster, a boundary drawn by his own pre-registered tests rather than by a reviewer. The method is the subject of a U.S. provisional patent application.

The work on this page asks whether the internal dynamics that carry a decision to commitment differ between cortex and AI models running matched tasks.

Thornhill is entirely self-taught. His prior career spans healthcare, from nursing assistant through nursing-home administration and ICU admissions. He runs a technology consultancy in Fort Wayne, Indiana, and when he isn’t researching he’s playing guitar, gardening, or spending time with his wife and daughter.

Elsewhere

CiteStampcitestamp.com ICSACicsacinstitute.org Foundationsicsacinstitute.org/books Codegithub.com/existencethreshold Bluesky@nathanthornhill.com LinkedInin/nathanthornhill Newsletternewsletter.nathanthornhill.com Main sitenathanthornhill.com

References

The sources behind the poster. The preprint carries the full text and the pre-registrations.

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