Cognitive Security as a Core Layer for Parallel Societies... and beyond

[Commodus64]

In an age where most of what we see, hear, and read is mediated, distorted, or deliberately engineered, perception itself has become the battleground.

I’d like to float a simple but urgent idea: a cognitive firewall—a filter designed to safeguard and augment human perception. Something that helps us move through today’s overwhelming information environment with greater clarity and resilience.

This isn’t about censorship or controlling thought. It’s about creating a shared layer of defense and augmentation—protecting individuals from manipulation while strengthening their ability to discern truth.

Could such a tool become part of the Logos stack, serving as a core layer for parallel societies? That’s the conversation I’d love to begin here.

Thoughts

[chair]

@Commodus64

Could such a tool become part of the Logos stack, serving as a core layer for parallel societies? That’s the conversation I’d love to begin here.

If I recall correctly Jarrad’s keynote from the most recent IFT all-hands meeting, this was a specific topic that was mentioned re: cognitive defenses and protecting user neural data.

[Commodus64]

Hey my good man. Sorry for the delay in response, but thank you very much for your reply/comment—do you happen to know if there’s a recording of Jarrad’s keynote available? I’d love to revisit that segment specifically.

On the topic of cognitive defenses and neural data:

There are two key points of contest when it comes to protecting user privacy and autonomy.

The first is well-tread ground—ensuring the secure storage and anonymization of neural data. That’s textbook cypherpunk territory: encryption, zero-knowledge proofs, decentralized architectures, etc.

But the second point is far less discussed, and arguably just as—if not more—important:

Protecting the fidelity of perception before belief is even formed.

In other words, safeguarding cognition at the point of entry.

If low-fidelity, highly manipulated, or overwhelming sense data becomes the norm (especially tertiary sense data like language, media, narratives), then everything downstream—including neural recordings—is already compromised.

The quality of sense data directly impacts what we believe, how we behave, and ultimately, what gets encoded into our neural patterns.

So to me, cognitive defense isn’t just about protecting what’s stored—it’s about protecting what gets in.

Intervening at this earlier layer (monitoring/filtering/modulating sense data itself) is essential if we’re serious about defending user autonomy and free will. Otherwise we’re just encrypting already-poisoned inputs.

Kindly,
Shaq

[vrnvrn]

Thank you for raising this. Awareness of flawed hardware (cognitive biases) and mitigation (methods of rationality) are vital as part of the defense stack. “Cognitive Sovereignty” is another term floating around in my circles that I think points in the same direction, with an emphasis on individual cognitive sovereignty in defense against natural tribal pitfalls such as group think that are inevitable to emerge in any collective action or decision making.

“One man who stopped lying could bring down a tyranny.” - Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago

“The emperor has no clothes”

Google Anna Riedl on Cognitive Sovereignty: Taking Epistemic Responsibility in the Meta-Crisis; links are not allowed on the forum

I think Julia Galef’s Scout Mindset is one practical treasure chest of tools for protecting one self at the level of “getting in” ;

cognitive defense isn’t just about protecting what’s stored —it’s about protecting what gets in

she shares thought experiments one can apply to test for common biases, such as:

• Halo Effect: Would I believe this if someone less likable said it?

• Sunk Cost: If I started fresh today, would I still choose this path?

• Double Standard: Would I judge this differently if my “side” did it?

and overall makes strong arguments for: holding beliefs lightly, avoiding identifying with beliefs, identifying with “being a truth seeker” to embrace updating beliefs upon encountering new information (ie empiricism). That self-delusion is not, indeed, necessary to accomplish ambitious goals, but rather a measured belief that a risk is worth taking.

In practice, parallel society / crypto city experiments I’ve helped organize have benefited from starting with an “orientation” level of onboarding in this direction, some amount of time at the start being dedicated to building a shared language for discussion and healthy disagreement.

In groups, people default to seeking harmony, especially when we’re actually living with one another long-term in IRL parallel society experiments. And as AI recommendation algorithms and slop exponentially improve and proliferate, cognitive defense is all the more important.

Holding space to discuss the meta-components of discussion within a discussion forum is also a good form of defense

[Commodus64]

Hey. Good evening. Thank you for your response and sharing your experience, especially around the onboarding work in parallel society and crypto city experiments. Establishing a shared language and healthy disagreement protocols is essential in any long-term collective—particularly when the default human tendency is to seek harmony over truth. And I fully agree: preserving cognitive sovereignty does ultimately come down to individual responsibility. I alone decide what to internalize, what to ignore, and what to question.

That said, I believe many approaches to cognitive defense—rationality training, bias mitigation, epistemic humility—begin their intervention a little too far downstream.

What I’ve been trying to emphasize with “point of entry” is that cognitive sovereignty begins with perception, not belief. That is, sense data itself^[1].

From an evolutionary perspective, our ancestors’ survival depended on the fidelity of sensory information. Long before formal logic, language, or narrative frameworks emerged, humans had to make life-or-death decisions based on visual cues, sounds in the brush, the scent of decay or bloom. These were direct, high-stakes interactions with reality—and they formed the bedrock of how the nervous system evolved to engage with the world.

Fast forward to today, and the vast majority of what we encounter—especially online—is no longer primary or even secondary sense data. It’s tertiary: symbols of symbols, simulations of experience, media, narrative, commentary, rhetoric^[2]. And most of it is abstracted, curated, or deliberately engineered to evoke response—not to reflect reality.

So while I support bias-checking and epistemic training, I don’t think they’re enough. By the time we’re engaging our rational faculties, we’re often already downstream of manipulation. The initial intake—the moment of perception—is where we are most vulnerable and least defended.

To put it another way: you can’t correct for distortion you never recognized.

And you can’t reason your way to truth if the raw data feeding your cognition is already compromised.

To me, building a resilient future—whether in a crypto city or digital commons—requires not just shared language or cognitive literacy, but a shared awareness of how polluted our perceptual environment has become.

That’s where I think the next evolution of cognitive defense must begin.

And if you’re open to it, I’d absolutely love to connect and collaborate further. I’ve got a few ideas floating around here in my mind— again, thank you for engaging with me so thoughtfully.

⸻

• Primary – Unmediated sensory experience; pre-cognition (e.g., direct observation, sound, touch).

• Secondary – Symbolic representations of experience; concrete recognition (e.g., photos, recordings, maps).

• Tertiary – Interpretive or abstracted data (e.g., narratives, opinions, algorithms, models).

Tertiary sense data is especially potent today as it dominates the digital and media environments we engage with most.

---

1. Sense data refers to the raw perceptual input received by the human system from the environment. This includes visual, auditory, olfactory, tactile, and proprioceptive stimuli—before interpretation or meaning is assigned. ↩︎

2. I break sense data into three tiers: ↩︎

[Commodus64]

Also—just wanted to say I love the Solzhenitsyn quote. I read the abridged version of The Gulag Archipelago a few years back and it left a real impression on me.

And yes—I remember tuning in to the Logos Network’s Live X Spaces when Anna Riedl was a guest speaker. I think she’s incredibly bright, and I’ve since looked into her work in the cognitive and behavioral sciences. She’s awesome.

As for Julia Galef—I’ll do my homework there

[vrnvrn]

@Commodus64

By the time we’re engaging our rational faculties, we’re often already downstream of manipulation . The initial intake—the moment of perception—is where we are most vulnerable and least defended.

I agree that we are at our most vulnerable at the moment of intake; we take in raw sensory data and our automatic processes fire (system 1) before we can pause and reason through the situation. However our capacity for reasoning distinguishes us from other creatures, and we have evolved not to react immediately, whether in behavior or in thought (we don’t need to immediately agree with everything we hear, nor do we in practice).

@Commodus64

To put it another way: you can’t correct for distortion you never recognized.

And you can’t reason your way to truth if the raw data feeding your cognition is already compromised.

Here I disagree. Why can’t we? I see optical illusions all the time where I’m well-aware that my vision is being tricked. We speak in layers of meaning with signals between the words we say and with our body language, with cultural and contextual distinctions. We’re able to differentiate between raw data and conclusions constantly.

@Commodus64

To me, building a resilient future—whether in a crypto city or digital commons—requires not just shared language or cognitive literacy, but a shared awareness of how polluted our perceptual environment has become.

That’s where I think the next evolution of cognitive defense must begin.

I agree that a shared awareness of information pollution is necessary. It’s important for individuals to be aware of how recommendation algorithms shape their digital landscape, how optimization for attention amplifies fear and anger, how financial incentives shape news narratives.

Awareness is not enough, it’s practice, on an individual level that must be widespread. No one should allow another to dictate their thoughts and opinions. We must trust each other to think for ourselves and refine our own abilities to think for ourselves. It isn’t possible to sterilize the raw data to be true, and anyone that claims to know the real truth should be distrusted. It is only through interacting with reality that we can update our mental models; continuously updating our maps to match the territories we move through.

@Commodus64

And if you’re open to it, I’d absolutely love to connect and collaborate further.

Sure thing! Let’s chat: cal(dot)com(slash)vrneth

[Commodus64]

Thank you for your response once again and the invitation to connect (I’ll reach out soon. I promise).

You make an important point about the human capacity to recognize distortion—optical illusions, subtext, body language, cultural signals. I agree that we’re not passive recipients of sense data, and I definitely don’t mean to deny the power of System 2 reasoning to help us revise our maps.

That said, I think part of the reason you can recognize those illusions so clearly is because you’re not only well-read and educated—you also engage reality more actively than most people do. You’ve trained your perception through practice, exposure, and likely some degree of privilege in time, environment, or community. That level of cognitive friction—questioning, resisting, reorienting—requires serious stamina.

But most people aren’t operating at that level.

For the average individual navigating high-frequency, high-volume environments (especially online), illusion detection isn’t just difficult—it’s exhausting. And some manipulations are subtle enough to slip through even the sharpest filters. None of us are immune.

Even now, despite all the work I’ve done, I’m still vulnerable.

When I engage with the world—whether through content, conversation, or just daily life—there’s a level of cynicism that creeps in. I stay alert, maybe too alert, because it’s just so easy to get sucked into emotional responses and entrenched beliefs. And when I’m not grounded, I feel it start to happen.

To be fully transparent: during the early COVID years, I was in a rough place. I was in a relationship that was already fragile. When the lockdowns hit, the cracks widened. She worked in healthcare, I was unemployed. She leaned liberal, I leaned center-right. The ideological differences weren’t new—but the stress magnified them. Communication broke down. Resentment built up. We stopped trying.

After the breakup, I spiraled into rage-bait content online. I was emotionally raw, isolated, and looking for meaning—or maybe just something to aim my anger at. I consumed hours of election conspiracy media. I became convinced the Democrats had stolen everything. I was in bad shape.

And here’s the thing: I knew better. But I wasn’t thinking. I was hurting. And I was vulnerable.

That’s why I’m here now. I transitioned out of aerospace and defense into this space because I saw firsthand how influence ops—state-run or not—can take root in people’s minds. Not just because of ignorance, but because of stress, loneliness, identity fragmentation.

And because I was a victim of one.

This is why I push so hard on the point-of-entry concept and why I don’t believe it’s enough to say, “People should think for themselves.” That’s true—but incomplete. We also need to build scalable systems of perceptual support that help people recognize distortion earlier in the pipeline, without handing them a prepackaged version of “truth.”

Because it’s in those moments—when the ground beneath us shakes or even gives way—that illusions take hold.

The communities building cryptographic tools, decentralized protocols, and parallel societies are often already inoculated to certain illusions. But not everyone will opt out of the nation-state system. Not everyone will join a parallel polis. And those people—our families, our neighbors, our younger selves—deserve protection too.

So when I talk about defending perception, I’m not talking about sterilizing sense-data or being the arbiters of truth. I’m talking about scaling discernment.

And I absolutely agree with you: it’s not just awareness, but practice that makes sovereignty real.

Appreciate the conversation, and looking forward to continuing

[Commodus64]

Wanted to drop in a quick follow-up after exploring the recommendations VrnVrn shared with me recently—these were great listens, and I got a lot out of both talks.

That said, I just finished listening to Anna Riedl’s talk on Cognitive Sovereignty: Taking Epistemic Responsibility in the Meta-Crisis. She’s incredibly sharp and clearly committed to navigating these challenges with depth and integrity.

But there’s one thing I haven’t been able to shake:

The framework she presents is almost entirely dependent on individuals performing cognitive reflection tasks—slow, deliberate, high-effort reasoning. It places the full burden of cognitive defense on the individual, without offering much in the way of upstream support.

Not only does it assume a level of epistemic vigilance that most people simply don’t have—it also depends on individuals possessing the time, energy, and resilience to sustain arduous reflection day after day, and almost always under stress.

And that’s the core vulnerability I keep circling around.

Cognitive reflection is a luxury.

If our defense stack depends entirely on people “thinking harder” or “reflecting more clearly,” then we’re designing a system that collapses under realistic conditions—especially for those who are isolated, overwhelmed, or already compromised by a polluted information environment.

That’s why I continue to emphasize the importance of sense-data filtration at the point of entry. Not to replace reflection, but to reduce the cognitive load it takes to get there. For sovereignty to scale, we can’t rely on constant manual override. We need perceptual infrastructure.

And if we want to build systems that protect real people—not idealized rational agents—then we need to meet them where they are. And that starts before they’re even conscious of what’s shaping their thinking.

I also took time to watch Julia Galef’s Scout Mindset TED talk, and it really struck a chord with me. The distinction between the Scout and the Soldier is a beautiful metaphor for what’s at stake right now. And the question she poses—“What do you most yearn for?”—is not just important, it’s seriously the orientation I strive for in my work.

That said, I think it’s important to name something:

Scout Mindset is a posture. But even scouts need good maps.

And in today’s terrain, the “maps” people are working with—media feeds, algorithms, narratives—are often booby-trapped.

Even the most sincere truth-seeker can be led astray without the tools to audit the terrain itself.

So… let’s give scouts better visibility before they even start the journey.

Let’s help clear the fog of war before asking them to navigate hostile information environments.

That’s the layer I’m trying to explore with my emphasis on point-of-entry cognition. Not to eliminate effort—but to protect the conditions under which clarity becomes possible.

Loved the resources and am extremely grateful for the space to speak.

—Shaq

Edits made were to fix some spacing.