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.

A patient master index sheet with rows of identifiers and records, symbolizing centralized medical record systems and identity tracking.

Cognitive Drift (Canonical Definition)

February 4, 2025

Cognitive Drift describes how human cognition continues to function, interpret, and respond while gradually losing alignment with reality. It emerges when thought becomes increasingly shaped by compressed representations, mediated inputs, and recursive internal models rather than direct contact with the world. Cognition does not fail in the obvious sense. It remains active, coherent, and adaptive, but begins drifting from what it is meant to track.

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