Thinking is the dynamic interplay and fluid switching between two cognitive modes: Adaptive and Optimized.
| Adaptive Mode | Optimized Mode | |
|---|---|---|
| Orientation | Explore | Exploit |
| Perception | Sensing | Habituation |
| Processing | Sensemaking | Habit |
| Outcome | Learning | Execution |
Qualities of Adaptive Mode
Adaptation, exploration, conscious, deliberative, slow, reflective, feedback loops, attuned, error is information, engages novelty, updates models, future-oriented, transformation, curious, vulnerable, learning, innovative, inefficient, ambiguous.
Qualities of Optimized Mode
Efficiency, exploitation, unconscious, automatic, fast, reactive, scripted, filtered, error is deviation, suppresses novelty, fixed models, past-anchored, repetition, confident, performative, execution, precision, brittle, rigid.
Simulated Thinking1 is getting trapped in Optimized Mode while mistaking it for the whole. The inability to recognize or transition into Adaptive Mode is itself a product of simulated thinking. It sees exploration as inefficiency, uncertainty as incompetence, deviation as defiance, and genuine thinking as error, disability, or hostility.
The result is a mode that appears smart but is actually non-adaptive. It's rewarded socially, but it drifts from reality (as real thinking is often marginalized, mocked, or attacked). This is not a healthy balance, but a structural bias toward exploit, baked into our institutions, technologies, and cultural norms.
- Systems over-optimize for known inputs.
- Exploration is replaced with execution, speed, and performance.
- Habits ossify into scripts and scripts become dogma.
- The environment shifts (faster and faster).
- The system has little to no adaptive capacity.
- Breakdown, collapse, and scapegoating ensue.
- "Simulated Thinking" coined by Jordan Hall in On Thinking and Simulated Thinking. ↩