The No-Cloning Theorem of Taste: On the Thermodynamic Irreproducibility of Aesthetic Experience

A design can be copied to the byte and still fail. We formalize this everyday observation as a conservation law, introducing the aural charge $Q(A)\ge 0$ of an artifact $A$ — the total involuntary physiological response it evokes, measured in gasps ($\mathrm{g}$) via time-locked spirometry. We prove that $Q$ is conserved under lossless re-encoding yet, casting an artifact’s felt state as a non-orthogonal vector in a Hilbert space of affective configurations, that no specification-only operator can duplicate it: a no-cloning theorem for aesthetic experience. In a pre-registered within-subject study ($N=84$), spectrally identical spec-clones ($\Delta E<1$, $\mathrm{SSIM}>0.99$) retained only 18% of the original charge ($\Delta Q=1.4\mathrm{g}$, $t(83)=11.2$, $p<10^{-16}$, $d=1.9$), and residual charge was uncorrelated with surface fidelity ($r=0.03$). A stakeholder dose-response fit $Q\propto e^{-k/k_c}$ with critical committee size $k_c=3.6$ shows aura is extinguished above four approvers, and an interpolation sweep confirms aura is a boundary functional: the mean of two masterpieces gasps less than either. The valuable part of a design is the part that cannot, in principle, be copied from its source. Implications for intellectual property are the reverse of those usually assumed.