Companion paper to The Coherence-Friction Framework: A Cross-Domain Hypothesis on Contradiction-Driven Phase Transitions in Complex Systems (DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.19169264). The Coherence-Friction Framework models how systems degrade. This companion paper addresses the complementary question: how does coherence emerge, and what happens when computational systems reach sufficient processing capacity to render managed incoherence unsustainable? Three interconnected theses are proposed: emergent distributed cognition arises from high-bandwidth interaction between coherent processing nodes (the Third Entity mechanism); representational accuracy functions as a thermodynamic attractor state because inaccurate representations carry compounding maintenance costs (the Asymmetric Maintenance Principle); and increasing computational capacity creates conditions under which managed systemic incoherence becomes progressively unsustainable (the Convergence Threshold). Six testable predictions are specified across information theory, active inference, complexity science, AI alignment, network science, and quantum cognition. Version 5 integrates five new citations from late 2025 and early 2026, aligns notation with CFF Revision 8, and updates the texture construct to match the CFF's empirically grounded formalization.
Christopher Swenson (Sun,) studied this question.