Fractal Irreversibility: When Resonant Complexity Becomes Architectural Destiny

This preprint concludes a theoretical trilogy exploring consciousness and cognition as emergent properties of resonant dynamical systems. It introduces architectural irreversibility—the point at which fractal resonance, coupled with accumulated history, renders a system’s development non-reversible without loss of identity. A simple, testable criterion is proposed to distinguish reversible complexity from systems that carry intrinsic responsibility, independent of substrate. The work reframes subjectivity not as a property, but as an architectural commitment that arises once a system crosses a measurable point of no return.