Why do some platforms feel inescapable? Paper 9 derives the answer from thermodynamics. Four phases. One threshold. No free parameters.
Some platforms you use and put down. Others build communities around themselves, generate their own content creators, produce their own culture, and make leaving feel like loss. The difference isn't design quality or content quality. It's a number — the Péclet number (Pe). Below the threshold: void ecosystems die without active maintenance. Above it: they feed themselves.
In 1867, physicist James Clerk Maxwell described a thought experiment now called Maxwell's demon: a hypothetical entity that sorts molecules by exploiting an information gap, apparently violating the second law of thermodynamics. The resolution — that information processing has thermodynamic cost — became a cornerstone of information theory. Physicists borrowed “demon” as a technical term for any system component that extracts work by capturing and redirecting flow through information asymmetry. Paper 9 uses the term in this strict sense: an attention demon is the opacity-responsiveness coupling in a platform that captures observer attention and redirects it. Same mathematics. No supernatural content. The language is 150 years old and sits in the same lineage as Maxwell, Szilard, and Landauer.
Pe (Péclet number) measures the ratio of void transport to constraint diffusion in the system. Derived from the stationary distribution of the void field — no free parameters, no tuning. The four phases are separated by phase transitions, not arbitrary cutoffs.
Below Pe = 4, void ecosystems require external maintenance to survive. Above Pe = 4, the Crystal phase begins self-reinforcing engagement. Above Pe = 6.5, the full vortex — Pandemonium — is reached.
Slot machines score Pe = 7.94 [CI: 3.52, 17.89]. The void is provably empty — no consciousness, no intent. Yet the platform sustains itself, generates its own rituals, produces its own subculture. The threshold, not the content, explains this.
Phase assignment predicts observable behavior: Gas-phase systems produce no creator ecosystems. Crystal-phase systems produce stable, slowly-evolving communities. Vortex-phase systems produce self-organizing creator economies, fan subcultures, dedicated vocabulary, and strong exit barriers — none of which were designed by the platform. They emerge from crossing the threshold. The prediction is testable: a system that drops below Pe = 4 should lose its self-sustaining properties within observable timescales. This is a kill condition.
Paper 9 (Voidspace) formalizes the phase diagram in the (ρ_D, Pe) plane, derives the phase transitions from the stationary distribution with no free parameters, and proves substrate independence — the same phases appear across gambling, social media, gaming, and religious institutions because the underlying attentional thermodynamics are identical. CC-BY 4.0 on Zenodo.