The Information Bridge: Alpha as Net Coherent Information Processing Rate in the Container Operator

This paper identifies the decoherence-mitigation variable alpha in the Coherence-Friction Framework's container operator equation as the net coherent information processing rate of the containing system. The refined formulation F_eff = F * exp(-(R * C * D - P) * tau_prep) decomposes alpha into raw processing rate (R), input coherence (C), input diversity (D), and parasitic load (P). The identification is justified by four independent physics derivations, grounded in Landauer's Principle, and supported by a definitional argument from the nature of decoherence itself. Empirical confirmation spans two independent domains: software engineering (p < 0.0001 across 99 Apache projects) and civilizational data (p = 10^-258 across 373 polities and 10,000 years from the Seshat Global History Databank). This fills a documented operationalization gap in the quantum cognition research program by connecting the decoherence parameter to a measurable physical quantity with established units.