Why Modern Life Feels Unreal: An Information-Theoretic Model of Cognitive Drift(papers.ssrn.com)
papers.ssrn.com
Why Modern Life Feels Unreal: An Information-Theoretic Model of Cognitive Drift
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=5958795
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This paper proposes an information-theoretic framework for understanding why modern digital environments increasingly produce experiences of unreality, fragmentation, and meaning loss. It models cognition as a compression process operating under entropy constraints, where subjective coherence depends on the mind’s ability to reduce high-dimensional experience into stable internal representations. Drift emerges when environmental entropy outpaces cognitive compression capacity, degrading fidelity and destabilizing perception, identity, and sense-making. The framework integrates insights from information theory, predictive processing, and media theory to explain contemporary phenomena such as attention fragmentation, synthetic media effects, and AI-mediated cognitive overload.