THE SUBSTITUTIVE FUNCTIONAL DIVERGENCE PRINCIPLE (SFDP)
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Abstract: This paper proposes the Substitutive Functional Divergence Principle (SFDP), a candidate generalized systemic principle concerning the consequences of replacing a direct functional pathway with an alternative or substitutive pathway. The originating case is Subconscious Cognitive Time Waste and Interpersonal Risk-Avoidance Paradox. In that case, an individual attempts to avoid the anticipated cost, uncertainty, and limited controllability of direct interpersonal engagement, yet may allocate substantial cognitive resources to indirect analysis, re-evaluation, and unresolved internal processing. The present formulation deliberately does not treat time, security, emotion, or resource expenditure as universal primitives. Instead, it abstracts the mechanism to a pathway-level relation among an objective or criterion, a direct pathway, a substitutive pathway, an implementation medium, a measurable functionality, an evaluation process, and the realized system state. The central claim is conditional: if a substitutive pathway is selected to avoid an unfavorable property of a direct pathway, and if the substitution changes the realized functional state relative to the intended state, then a measurable functional divergence can arise. Resource divergence is treated as one special manifestation rather than the definition of the principle. The framework is organized into nine analytical layers and three stages per layer: default-mechanism extraction, abstraction, and divergence/boundary analysis. A 30-case cross-domain architecture is proposed as a validation and generalization program rather than as thirty independent proofs. Mathematical state-space, functional, feedback, and resource-specific representations are provided where their assumptions are meaningful. No empirical universality is claimed. The paper specifies falsification conditions, counterexamples, domain boundaries, alternative explanations, and a pathway by which the proposed principle could, if repeatedly supported across heterogeneous systems, become a candidate for stronger law-level status.
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References
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