Prime a population from N independent converged elites + crossover-heavy
migration phase, vs best-of-N at equal total budget. Island does NOT win:
harbor 68 vs control 67 (within parallel noise), maple 124 vs control 116
(decisive). Default-off child_probe hook on driver.search instruments the
deciding mechanism: area-matched crossover across independently-converged
elites rarely synthesizes (1/65 harbor, 3/63 maple beat the better parent,
max fail-drop 2-5), confirming the alignment hypothesis (non-canonical 9gp
encoding -> disruptive splice). Search-machinery null #3; residual stays
geometry/shape-bound. 233 tests pass.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 <noreply@anthropic.com>
