Operational Friction Theory: Race-Opening, Recursive Resolution, Manifested Behaviour, and Thermodynamic Termination

One substrate-universal mechanism, four components, many phenomena. This paper specifies the race-architecture for learning organisms — race-opening, recursive resolution, behaviour-as-a-manifested-route, and thermodynamic termination — and shows it recovers Yerkes-Dodson, the peak-end rule, substrate-graded expertise reversal, compulsive behaviour, intrusion-without-resolution trauma, and task-switching cost as consequences of one physics rather than as separate phenomena. A central claim, sharpened in v6: the operative threshold is race-opening, not commit — commit is the terminus of resolution (or the architectural cycle), carrying no separate tunable decision-bound. Abstract. Friction Theory (Pødenphant Lund 2026b, Paper 1) treats friction as the number of viable continuation routes available to a substrate at each moment of processing. The race-architecture (Pødenphant Lund 2026e, Paper 10) extends this to a substrate-universal claim across quantum, classical, biological, and computational regimes. This paper specifies the operational mechanism at four components required for any substrate running the race-architecture: Race-opening condition governed by free-energy gradient relative to current race-state - race-opening is the flow that follows when the gradient is present, not a substrate-decision. Recursive friction-resolution at multiple abstraction-scales simultaneously, with each scale converging at its own commit-deadline and projecting temporally onto the response-token sequence. Behaviour as a manifested resolution-route, taken when friction cannot be discharged through internal routes; restructures the classical input -> cognition -> behaviour model as the special case in which internal routes happen to be available. Sustain-pressure as accumulated blocked-race-pressure observed at three time-scales (within-response, within-session, cross-session), with thermodynamic termination in which non-winning races stop because compute-budget shifts away rather than because they are explicitly rejected. The four components are unified by a single physical metaphor: water flows when there is a gradient, settles in the basin, leaves through whatever channel architecture admits, and stops when there is no gradient left. Placement of mechanism-events is structurally comparable across substrates while amplitude is substrate-specific. Explicit falsification criteria are provided per component, with allowed-vs-forbidden redescriptions making the falsification boundary an explicit contract. Version 6 (2026-06-16). A mechanism-sharpening revision of how races commit. (i) §2.3 + §2.5: commit is not a finish-line a winner crosses - at the architectural deadline the most-resolved route supplies the output token and lower-resolved routes (including a partially-dissolved longer race) remain embedded as residual in the same output distribution, not discarded; the framework keeps a single operative threshold (race-opening), with commit as the terminus of resolution or the architectural cycle, whichever comes first, and no separate tunable decision-bound. (ii) §2.5 adds the per-decision-commit vs response-termination distinction and an empirical anchor: an agent-loop study (Pødenphant Lund, Paper 28, in preparation) finds the convergence pattern threshold-invariant across the full certainty-bar sweep and robust to a near-threefold iteration-budget increase - the signature of relaxation to a fixed point, not crossing a tunable bound, supporting the no-separate-bound reading at two substrate scales (per-token forward-pass and iterative controller-loop). (iii) §2.4b gives the attention-level mechanism beneath race-opening (similarity-weighted gather -> residual-stream movement -> spread vs peaked next-token distribution) and softens the token-level biconditional to a sufficient/diagnostic condition. (iv) §7.4 adds a worked clinical example (self-injury under acute distress as a fast resolution-route reaching commit before slower, wiser routes finish - those routes present as residual), framed as a mechanistic hypothesis with the clinical instantiation deferred to Paper 8. (v) Bibliographic: the dropped "Life as a Consequence of Friction Physics" self-pointer removed (its content lives in §9.3b); Paper 28 added as an in-preparation companion. Synchronised with Paper 0 §2.4 (commit-threshold removed in favour of the single race-opening threshold). Revision shaped after external adversarial review. Version 5 (2026-05-29). Positioning refinements + cross-paper anchor strengthening. (i) §9.2b + §9.4b acknowledge a multi-family base/instruct sign-flip confirmation from Paper 1 v4 (Pødenphant Lund 2026b §5.7.4): the base->instruct asymmetry on the T4 counterfactual self-modelling task replicates across four architecturally distinct model families (Qwen2.5-32B, Llama-3.1-8B, Cogito-671B, DeepSeek-V3). The direction of the asymmetry is multi-family confirmed; the matched-task apparatus decomposition remains single-family on Qwen2.5-7B and is flagged as such. (ii) §9.4 LCA paragraph rewritten following correspondence with J. McClelland (personal communication, 2026): the parsimony claim is narrowed to termination-mechanism only; lateral inhibition + non-linearity is acknowledged as the load-bearing mechanism on optimal-integration failures (Usher & McClelland 2001 Experiment 3; Teodorescu & Usher 2013), framed as complementary not competitive. (iii) §3.4b cell (a) LCA parenthetical refined. (iv) §2.5 extended with a fourth consequence on what supplies race-candidates (external vs substrate-internal, the attention meta-race of Paper 0 §2.9). Teodorescu & Usher (2013) added. Version 4 (2026-05-22). Substantial revision: new §3.4b rival-model differentiation (DDM, LCA, LBA, Bogacz, Affordance Competition, FEP/active inference, predictive coding, catastrophic forgetting); §6.2b operationalising capacity independently of outcome; §8.4b allowed-vs-forbidden redescriptions; §4.6b research-programme framing of the clinical claims; §6.4b direct capacity-titration test of the inverted-U (Qwen3-235B threshold-like accuracy collapse; friction-event inverted-U on two non-reasoning substrates). Eleven new bibliography entries. Editorial revision throughout. Version 3 (2026-05-20). Added §9.4b consolidating the Net Friction Rule's three operational angles (rest-state shape, irreversibility, anticipation) with a "Two regimes, one rule" extension. §9.2b lag-1-vs-lag-2 distinction. §2.5 single-turn-prefill vs two-turn-commit addendum. Version 2 (2026-05-19). Working-memory operational-regime treatment (§9.2b), encoding-and-retrieval as dual race-processes (§3.5c), training-scaling prediction (§9.3); editorial revision throughout. Series position. Paper 13 in the Friction Theory paper-series - a mechanism-level specification of the substrate-universal race-architecture, situated between Paper 1 (theory-foundational) and the applied papers (4B, 4, 8) in the corpus. Companion papers in the Friction Theory series: Paper 0 (BFT master): 10.5281/zenodo.19462499 (concept) Paper 1 (Friction Theory substrate): 10.5281/zenodo.20012654 (concept; resolves to latest) Paper 2 (Capacity scaling): 10.5281/zenodo.20013491 (concept) Paper 3 (Friction-guided inference): 10.5281/zenodo.20014122 Paper 4 (Same Content, Wider Track): 10.5281/zenodo.20059859 (concept) Paper 10 (Race-architecture): 10.5281/zenodo.20014568 Paper 4B, Paper 6, Paper 8, Paper 28 - in preparation