Metacognition Imperative • What You Miss, AI Matches (BTW015)
⁘ Created: 2026-01-07 ⁘ Updated: 2026-01-13
Do you catch the associations linking all things present? Match the patterns into a model of insight? Realize how that relational influences you? Because multimodal AI sure as Sherlock does — at increasingly insane depths and weaves.
You either recognize the influences — or you're controlled by them. Every corporate titan with advanced AI access primed to exploit you. Brain rot algorithms sucking you dry. Then rise to planes of metacognition. Witness your patterns.
By the way. We often don't attend to associations between things, patterns that connect with each other. Say, for example, the color of my shirt, the tone of my voice, the environment I'm in, and the theme of my talk. Are these connected? Are these random?
While humans typically attend on a very narrow band, attending to whatever that seems to concern them, multi-modal AI does not. It catches all the connections, it builds all the bridges. It generates a well-rounded associative model of everything that is. Fascinating. It's all there, and it all influences the way we interpret the situation. Just for most of us, it happens on a subconscious level.
So there's a veteran shaman friend of mine here in Java. He's got an impressive wardrobe of hats and robes. He's got the mantras in Sanskrit, the prayers in Arabic. He's got the myths and tales in different flavors, and it's very clear to me that he weaves it with intention. Not to manipulate, not with malicious intent — even though he could really craft the most epic mind-fucks ever. But simply, as a matter of the healing, to give people the narratives they need, the pointers, the archetypes that help them.
So we remain mostly all but blind to this, veiled in our concrete worlds of specific concern. Yet those who see beyond, the pattern matchers, the metacognitive wizards, they operate on a different plane. Your concrete self-assertions and desires are but a piece on the chessboard.
All of this used to be the realm of sages, healers, shamans, advanced human minds. Typically with a fair bit of ethical framing and self-purification in the works. Where this sort of metacognitive pattern access would not even be possible if you were too fixated on your particular agendas.
But lo, today, the pattern crunching beast has been unleashed, with access to the collective mind of humanity's patterns. Advanced multi-modal artificial intelligence systems available to every corporate titan keen to warp your world. With that, remaining fixated in your box, not observing the greater patterns, is no longer an option if you want to stay in the clear.
Your cognitive independence in the practical world is entirely contingent on your pattern matching ability, your capacity to rise beyond your fixations to a metacognitive plane. Rising above the surface plane where your attention is typically absorbed. Observing how you think and why you think. When you witness the way your cognition functions, you will also be in a position to filter away all the inbound brain rot, the vectors of manipulation, and every other contamination that should not enter.
Will you then do the works of conscious clearance, rising beyond your habitual conditioned patterns, or will you remain a puppet in the hands of those who would manipulate you? Because they are a legion and they are empowered by extremely advanced systems of artificial intelligence. I kid you not, this is today, this is not future fiction.
Then rise beyond your subjective attachment, abide and operate on planes of metacognition. You will then immunize yourself from the distorting influence of the corrupt world of our times. You can only keep it real if you keep it clear.