Cognitive Offloading Is a Universal Phenomenon
drmichaellevin · x · 2026-07-10
This preprint proposes that "cognitive offloading is a universal phenomenon of cognition," arguing that humans and other persistent information processing systems delegate some cognitive tasks to the environment.
The author substantiates this view using fundamental physics and the free energy principle, citing niche construction, language systems, and the fluent linguistic capabilities of LLMs as examples of this offloading mechanism.
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