Paper 6BC in the Friction Theory paper-series. A programmatic proposal for two candidate substrate signatures of race-architecture, both measurable from logprobs alone on language-model substrates. The contribution is a research direction with stated commitments and known gaps, not a mature unification. Abstract. A race-architecture under bounded resources — parallel evaluation of candidates, accumulation under resource limits, and an irreversible commit — leaves a substrate state during and after each race-resolution. This paper is a programmatic proposal, not a completed theoretical contribution: it sketches two candidate substrate signatures that can in principle be measured from logprobs alone, and specifies the measurement programme each would require to become a falsifiable result. The two candidate readouts: Post-encoding trace-dominance — readout in comparative-evaluation races. Friction invested during encoding is proposed to lay down a deeper hysteresis trace; that trace then carries a larger signal-share in subsequent comparative-evaluation races. Six classical biases in the value-attribution literature (the IKEA effect, the endowment effect, the sunk-cost fallacy, the generation effect, effort justification, and the effort heuristic) are argued to share this race-mechanic component, with the caveats that some of these effects (notably endowment under passive-ownership manipulations and sunk-cost under commitment-without-effort) have well-documented occurrences in conditions where the friction-trace component cannot be the operative mechanism. The race-mechanic is proposed as one component of an effort-essential subset of these effects, not as a single-mechanism reduction of all six. Commit-position — readout in the response trajectory itself. A race-architecture must commit at some point in its output. Where in the trajectory it commits, how that position drifts, and how its variance is shaped by training are themselves measurable substrate properties. A preliminary computational probe on Qwen2.5-7B-Base versus its instruction-tuned counterpart, fine-tuned on identical content, shows three direction-consistent patterns: the base model exhibits a 3.4× wider cross-condition spread in commit proportion than the instruct model; drifts away from the secretary-problem optimum 1/e ≈ 0.368 as task-interpretation deepens; and shows a meta-race coupling between recognition and commit markers (Pearson r = 0.528) that the instruct model lacks (r = 0.104). The single-cell numerical match with 1/e is recorded as a coincidence to be replicated, not as a finding. Three-grade taxonomy of claims (§1.3): Grade (a) re-expression — established phenomena re-expressed in the framework's vocabulary; parsimony without novel empirical content. Applied to: the IKEA effect under restricted scope, the generation effect, the effort heuristic. Grade (b) candidate derivation with surplus content — quantitative or qualitative prediction the native literature does not make. Applied to: predicted inverted-U over effort intensity (vanishing at trivial difficulty, peak at productive friction, dissipation at overwhelming difficulty — Norton et al. 2012 documents the dissipation boundary without explaining it); the commit-position spread × condition signature distinguishing base from instruction-tuned substrates. Grade (c) speculative extension — framework applied where empirical case is not established. Applied to: the loss-aversion-as-soft-irrevocability-reversal-cost interpretation (offered as a speculative coda in §5.3, with no new evidence); the "three asymmetries" structural-homology speculation. What this paper is. A programmatic statement of two candidate substrate signatures, a stratified accounting of their empirical readiness, an explicit list of the falsifiers each commits to, and a self-contained engagement with the accumulator-models literature (DDM, LCA; Appendix B) so that the proposal can be evaluated without consulting the companion papers. What this paper is not. A confirmed unification of effort-value biases, a validated quantitative match to 1/e, a derivation of loss aversion from first principles, or a replacement for any of the native-vocabulary treatments. Readers should expect a research direction worth pursuing, not a result. Companion papers in the Friction Theory series: Paper 0 (Behavioural Friction Theory): 10.5281/zenodo.19462499 Paper 1 (Friction Theory substrate): 10.5281/zenodo.20012654 Paper 2 (Capacity scaling): 10.5281/zenodo.20013491 Paper 2B (ICL/FT substrate mechanism): 10.5281/zenodo.20145218 Paper 3 (Friction-guided inference): 10.5281/zenodo.20014121 Paper 4B (Substrates Encode Experience): 10.5281/zenodo.20059861 Paper 5 (Field-theoretic taxonomy of emotions): 10.5281/zenodo.20058825 Paper 6 core (Matched Friction Under Hysteresis): 10.5281/zenodo.20059863 Paper 10 (Race-architecture across substrates): 10.5281/zenodo.20014567 Paper 13 (Operational Friction Theory): 10.5281/zenodo.20059876 Paper 14 (Logic as Reactance): 10.5281/zenodo.20217712
Tomas Lund (Wed,) studied this question.