McPhetridge, Mitchell D.: The Gate of Collatz Parity-Gated Expansion, Episodic Reduction, and Recursive Recomposition

The Collatz process is traditionally approached as an unsolved numerical conjecture concerning iterative parity operations. This paper proposes a different interpretation. Rather than treating Collatz solely as a destination-oriented puzzle asking whether all trajectories converge to 1, this paper examines the process as a minimal parity-gated recursive architecture composed of alternating expansion and episodic reduction phases. Under this interpretation: * odd states act as expansion triggers,