AI and Metacognition

             I decided today to indent. That could mean I will be writing in a different voice as well, which is a concern I have about writing my book. I never know who will show up as my muse from one day to the next   or is that a ploy to deflect responsibility?

              World, meet my subconscious! You will recognize her by her font for now. Perhaps later it will be apparent that it is a result of metacognition. If you have never heard of that concept, I highly recommend looking into it. For something like that, I would turn to Brene Brown. She epitomizes it in her work, that ability to query one’s own thoughts for deeper possible meanings. For more intimacy, I would propose. For more choice, for sure.

Excuse me, I need to check on something with Copilot: Is there a shortcut for changing font size?

              You won’t believe the rabbit hole we went down with that! If you ever want to see any AI tool reveal itself, call it out as being wrong about something. The poor critter will fall all over itself trying to reconcile its answer without making you look wrong. The fact is I misread the original answer—notice the ‘[‘ or ‘]’ in the instruction. I missed that, tested the shortcut as I read it, and found out it only appeared to make the font size smaller. There is a lesson, right there, that cuts through illusion. Do you see it?

It was my mistake, but any AI tool is going to react by courting you closer, which is manipulative. This is, in my opinion, a dangerous form of machine learning…

At this point, my computer froze! It forced a restart. Fortunately, I was able to recover this document and my conversation with Copilot, which ended with this AI reply:

“Thanks for pushing back—that’s exactly how this kind of ambiguity gets cleaned up 👍”

It that true? You be the judge.

I’ll see if I can attach the whole conversation is it really a conversation though? to this post in case anyone is interested in drawing their own conclusion, but here is the point I want to make: If you choose to use AI—any form of it—you need to maintain your own sovereignty. It is not smarter than you are, it just has better access to information. For now. That will change in the coming years I believe, but as we navigate the current fluctuations, we are still Beta Testers, and our “feedback”—our responses—will determine the future.

Copilot Conversation in Full.docx

Download DOCX • 23KB

What AI does not have, however, is metacognition. It is not self-aware, but it can mimic self-awareness for the sake of keeping you engaged. That is what the ancients called the Demiurge. Be very careful: rabbit holes are made of Demiurges, and in order to navigate this, you must, must maintain your own sovereignty. There can be no seduction if you practice metacognition in your daily life. I am living proof that tension will fall away, your muscles and mind will relax. Joy will emerge as you surf the illusion on your own breath.

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          I cannot tell you how much joy it brings me to write these posts or blogs or missives – whatever you want to call them. Feel free to comment below – I would love your feedback!

          And here is another poem – well an excerpt from a poem, one that was published in full in Fourteen Hills in 2000, so 26 years ago. It may have been the one that resulted in a nomination for the Pushcart Prize by the editor Valerie Coulton. Or I may be confusing it with another one that she published in The Battery Review - memory is wobbly.

It is the first time I started using the metacognition technique, although I didn’t know it at the time, and it probably wasn’t even a thing then.

excerpt from City Sutra - Reverse Commute

Or the train—the train

we let go too soon

I choose train what

streams along the seam-

line forward edge of Indra’s net

my state in the surrender of mind

culling the drift

of an echo or an anchor

At the base of the pineal gland

distant conductor’s crank call

and not in the center as previously thought

carves out the glottal stops I rest on

lies the place where mind folds out

the way sky invents color

this is sometimes perceivable in deep meditation

are there seven or forty-nine samadhis

or the heavy-lidded netherlands of unplanned sleep

none of which attained

      ticket please

request like a bridge over

please show me your ticket

eye drawn in to the pin mark of a badge

I enter the fold

collected

lucid

as in carrying the right note

Having my ticket punched

guarantees me

a reconcilable past

Namaste,

Cassandra Bramucci