{
  "abstract": "Semantic feedback can repair a noisy first decode without retransmitting the whole message, but current end-to-end evaluations hide where a feedback design fails. An oracle that sees both the source-side state and receiver observation may describe a useful correction with few bits, while the receiver, which sees only its own observation, may not know which correction to request. We formulate these as distinct direct and receiver-constrained coding problems, connect repair distortion to retained local utility and prove a random-access separation: one direct bit is exact although receiver utility vanishes with the number of source-conditioned alternatives. A synthetic ladder verifies the exact law. In paired populations of eight Reuters text-JSCC codecs, the trained recurrent population retains over three times more direct 16-bit repair value than the trained DeepSC population despite comparable full-repair opportunity. Nevertheless, an entropy-valid receiver audit across all eight recurrent checkpoints does not resolve against repetition, source-only or shuffled-index controls. The results show that compressible repair is an upper bound, not evidence of deployable feedback, and motivate reporting both rate curves under matched resources.",
  "abstract_shown": true,
  "affiliations": [],
  "article_type": null,
  "arxiv": "2609.25020",
  "author_total": 1,
  "authors": [
    {
      "name": "Milad Bafarassat"
    }
  ],
  "bibtex": "https://research.draconitic.com/paper/e5hek739b04c8.bib",
  "cited_by": 0,
  "doi": "10.48550/arxiv.2609.25020",
  "fulltext_url": null,
  "id": "e5hek739b04c8",
  "issns": [],
  "landing_url": "https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.25020",
  "language": null,
  "licence": "CC-BY-4.0",
  "licence_label": "CC BY 4.0",
  "licence_source": "article",
  "licence_url": "http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/",
  "metadata_licence": "CC0-1.0",
  "native_subjects": [
    [
      "arxiv",
      "cs.IT"
    ],
    [
      "arxiv",
      "eess.SP"
    ],
    [
      "arxiv",
      "math.IT"
    ],
    [
      "openalex",
      "1705|Error Correcting Code Techniques"
    ]
  ],
  "openalex": "W7214097869",
  "pdf_url": "https://arxiv.org/pdf/2609.25020",
  "pmcid": null,
  "pmid": null,
  "published": "2026-10-09",
  "publisher": null,
  "ris": "https://research.draconitic.com/paper/e5hek739b04c8.ris",
  "sources": [
    {
      "first_seen": "2026-10-30T12:28:40Z",
      "native_id": "2609.25020",
      "source": "arxiv",
      "url": "https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.25020"
    }
  ],
  "subjects": [
    {
      "field": "mathematics",
      "origin": "arxiv:math.IT",
      "subfield": "general"
    }
  ],
  "title": "Compressibility is not Feedback: A Random-access Gap in Causal Semantic Repair",
  "title_text": "Compressibility is not Feedback: A Random-access Gap in Causal Semantic Repair",
  "type": "preprint",
  "updated_at": "2026-10-30T12:28:40Z",
  "url": "https://research.draconitic.com/paper/e5hek739b04c8",
  "venue": "arXiv",
  "versions": []
}