diff --git a/docs/re/METHOD.md b/docs/re/METHOD.md index dbfeeec1..e8453deb 100644 --- a/docs/re/METHOD.md +++ b/docs/re/METHOD.md @@ -1285,3 +1285,33 @@ across geometries. Nobody was looking for that. measurement (single-channel, plate-crop) *and* the published figure had a real flaw. "One of us must be right" was never the shape of it — which is worth remembering before spending a round arguing about which. + +## A rule learned from a burn generalises to cases that LOOK like the burn, not to cases that share its mechanism + +Contributed by the port agent, and it is the sharpest thing either of us has put in +this file. + +This file already carries **two** divisor bugs, both the same shape: a silent input +sitting in a divisor and attenuating real signal. The lesson taken from them was +roughly *"be suspicious of dividing by N"*. So when the intro's three streams had to +be combined, the port summed at **unity** — and its own checker rejected the tree at +**+2.62 dBFS**. + +🔴 **The precedent did not transfer, and the surface shape is why it looked like it +would.** Both cases are "several streams, one output". But: + +* a BGM bank's two waves are **stems of one signal** — parts that were split apart + and must be added back; +* the intro's three streams are **positions in a field** — a stereo downmix weights + them 0.4142 / 0.2929 / 0.2929, which **sum to one whatever the assignment**, so + the total is fixed even when the placement is unknown. + +Divide-by-N is neither right nor wrong in itself. It depends on whether the inputs +are parts of one *signal* or parts of one *field*, and nothing in the phrase +"several streams, one output" distinguishes those. + +⚠️ **The general failure**: a rule extracted from a specific burn tends to be indexed +by *what the burn looked like* rather than by *why it happened*. It then fires on the +next thing with the same silhouette — and, worse, feels well-earned while doing it. +When reaching for a past lesson, state the mechanism it turned on and check that +mechanism is present, not the resemblance.