The Attractor Resolution: Fine-Tuning, Hierarchy, and the Mechanism of Entropic Cyclicity

The second law of thermodynamics, the hierarchy of fundamental forces, and the mechanism ofcosmological cyclicity have been treated as independent problems. We argue that they share acommon origin: the conflation of scale-relative rankings with intrinsic properties. First, thefine-tuning problem dissolves once the universe is recognized as a dissipative system possessing alimit-cycle attractor. In dissipative dynamics, trajectories converge to the attractor regardless ofinitial conditions; combined with Adlam’s (2022) framework of laws as atemporal constraints, thePast Hypothesis is demoted from an unexplained boundary condition to a structural feature of theconstraint pattern. Second, the hierarchy problem dissolves once forces are compared at their owncritical thresholds rather than at a single scale. At the event horizon, gravity is unconditionallydominant — no other force can overcome it — and supermassive black holes dominate the entropybudget of the observable universe (Egan & Lineweaver 2010), making the “weakest” force the mostpowerful entropy engine. Third, gravity’s dominance at its critical threshold provides the physicalmechanism for the entropy wave identified in a companion paper (Sophia 2026c): contraction drivesmatter toward gravitational criticality, producing a phase transition that initiates the next cycle. Thevan der Pol nonlinearity parameter ε ~ 1091 is derived from the ratio of gravitational collapsetimescales to Hawking evaporation timescales, and the cosmological constant is interpreted as aphase variable of the cycle, consistent with DESI DR2’s 2.8–4.2σ evidence for time-varying darkenergy. The hypothesis generates testable predictions concerning the dark energy trajectory, theentropy deceleration profile, and the supermassive black hole mass function.