Part of the Reality Drift framework (2023–2026) by A. Jacobs.
Cognitive Drift describes the gradual misalignment between a person’s internal models of the world and the realities those models are meant to represent.
It emerges when individuals operate in environments where information changes faster than meaning can stabilize. As signals accelerate and contexts fragment, mental models must update continuously, weakening coherence, orientation, and long-term integration.
Within the Reality Drift framework, Cognitive Drift represents the individual-level experience of drift.
As environments become more mediated, optimized, and information-dense, individuals must repeatedly revise their interpretations of reality. Over time this continuous recalibration destabilizes meaning and erodes the stability of internal models.
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