Hi,
Here is an example of conditional life involving a bent four and a seki (this is an imaginary game) :
The bent four is in the top left corner. The only threat left is the seki in D5, but it is too small to overcome the bent four.
Japanese rules : top left : Black is dead; center : Black and White live in seki. White wins.
Under area scoring, the stones must be actually captured, which leads to the following position.
In order to win the ko, White has to sacrifice the seki, and Black wins !
The interesting points in this position are
-The status of the four bent can't be discussed : it is dead under both real and hypothetical play.
-Black can't prove that the White chain in the seki is dead. There is no way for her to capture it if White doesn't cooperate.
Under area scoring, Black must demand the strict application of the rule in order to claim her victory : there is no agreement about so-called "dead groups". Each player has 1 point per stone + 1 point per intersection surrounded by the stones, end of story.
The french rule allows this by carefully avoiding to state that a disagreement should be about the status of a group of stones. Any disagreement allows to resume the game.
On the other hand, the rule doesn't state that the game has to go on until the dead stones are actually captured. It is just implicit in the definition of the score.
I don't know the details of the AGA rule about this.
Now, if I follow your simplified japanese rule, what happens if White passes during the analysis, and everything stays the same ?
The analysis failed to create a two-eye formation in the top left corner in the position of the A13 white chain or in the position of the E13 black chain. The whole region is surrounded by only one independently alive chain, that is white's in H13.
the rule says
"They consider the connected regions that are adjacent only to one player's independently alive strings and that consist of intersections being empty or having opposing not independently alive strings on, which they remove".
This region doesn't match this definition : it also has a not independently alive string of the same colour. Therefore nothing is removed from it (*). Black wins.
On the other hand, if white captures the bent four during the analysis, then a two-eye-formation has been formed in the top and another one in the center. The bent four is removed as well as the seki, and Black wins.
The way I see it, you avoid all the complications of the japanese rule by giving up the tradition of the teire points (that lead to the new definition of seki in the 1989 rule), the tradition of having the players paying the price of resolving kos and the tradition of having the four bent dead (that lead to the different rules in alternation and analysis in the 1989 rule). Thus returning to a strict territory scoring.
I like this.
(*) I interpret the rule this way so that this position remains seki :
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