I've perused some literature and the noise from online forums resulting in a plausible theory of the mechanism of male pattern baldness that I've seen proposed:

1 - Higher testosterone, generally correlated with higher amounts of DHT as testosterone is metabolized into DHT. This obviously depends on some intermediary metabolic process and all of the dependencies involved there.

2 - Certain hair follicles are DHT resistant. Why does MPB follow a M-shaped pattern and devolve into common patterns across those afflicted?

3 - https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26622151/ Mechanical stress points on the scalp seems to map injectively to the areas that see hair recede.

Takeaway: mechanical stress induces chronic inflammation on the scalp, localized in areas that correspond to MPB hairloss areas. Chronic inflammation begets androgen binding and those with high amounts of systemic DHT/vulnerable follicles develop MPB.