What is Cognitive Drift?

Cognitive Drift is the gradual misalignment between internal mental models and the realities they are meant to represent when information changes faster than meaning can stabilize.

What is Co-Cognition?

Co-Cognition is a recursive feedback loop between human cognition and AI systems where outputs are reintegrated as input, reshaping how thought is formed and updated.

What is Recursive Compression?

Recursive Compression is the repeated compression of information into increasingly efficient representations, which can support understanding while increasing abstraction.

What is Cognitive Hygiene?

Cognitive Hygiene describes constraints that preserve cognitive stability by limiting input, enforcing closure, and preventing continuous unresolved processing.

An evidence diagram with annotations and directional markings, symbolizing structured interpretation, observation, and analytical framing.

Cognitive Drift Papers Archive (2023-2025)

May 18, 2025

This page records the early Cognitive Drift papers developed between 2023 and 2025. The original PDFs were later retired as the ideas were revised, renamed, and consolidated into the current work.

The series explored how cognition changes as information is compressed, reused, and extended through human-AI interaction. Early topics included fidelity loss, runaway recursion, meaning degradation, cognitive compression, and co-cognition.

For current work, see the Cognitive Drift and Co-Cognition concept papers.