Physics from Finite Validation: The Solitaire of Forces — Reading the Four Interactions Through Finite Validation, and Gravity as the Proto-Force

This fourth work of the series turns from recovering physics to reading it: it asks what makes a force a force, and sorts the four fundamental interactions by a proposed pair of criteria — a fixation-label/conductor (charge is the capacity to emit and absorb its carrier) and a decay profile (how the interaction changes with separation). By this pair: gravity is recovered (the delay-gradient of Paper 1) ; electromagnetism has label and conductor, with the 1/r² profile a debt; the strong reads as the interference of two profiles (a short repulsion and a long attraction), giving a trough with a numerical attractor. This version (v2) pays the load-bearing debt of v1. Where v1 used a phenomenological screened proxy for the long profile (attractor r* ≈ 7. 17), v2 replaces it with the picture's own unscreened delay field — a Laplace/Poisson field by construction — and the attractor survives (r* = 10. 6 ± 0. 1 from all starts), with a linear 1D tail that reads as confinement (in the Gauss-law, low-dimensional/flux-tube sense, not the non-abelian confinement of QCD). A companion Kuramoto run shows the network builds this field itself (1D Gauss jump within 0. 6%), and a stress test locates where the linearisation breaks. strong-as- (gravity×EM) thus moves from a candidate reading to an in-model mechanism (1D). The weak interaction's decay channel is reclassified as template relaxation rather than a binding force; its lifetime hierarchy is confirmed in-model on two axes — the barrier (v1) and the template delay (v2) — with the quantitative slope qualified by a multi-seed check (robust in direction, ×2–5 seed scatter). Relaxation is offered as identical to entropy at two levels of description, with an in-model H-test. Across the four interactions the version states, and tests, a single claim: gravity is not one of four forces but the proto-force — the delay field is their common substrate, and each of the other three carries a measurable mark of gravitational origin, graded honestly as of unequal strength (compositional for the strong — substantive; structural for the weak — partly definitional; metric for electromagnetism — near-tautological). The dimensionality debt is re-scoped against the bridge work, which now supplies the network-to-field bridge in 1D and 3D and an independent 3D confinement; a genuine tension (a massive 3D Klein–Gordon limit against the massless unscreened trough field) is named, not hidden. A dedicated ledger itemises the debts this version closes, partially closes, or dissolves. All results carry status labels (confirmed in-model / consistency check / observation / lesson / open) ; runs are exploratory instruments within stated models, not measurements of nature. The record contains two files: the main article and the Numerical Companion (full protocols, seeds, per-result status labels). Code: https: //github. com/ivan-denysov/finite-validation-forces