Core Cognitive Frameworks

2. Core Cognitive Frameworks

2.1 Dissection-to-Direction (D2D) Protocol

2.1.1 Purpose

Provide a rigorous, step-by-step cognitive workflow for transforming:

  • raw material (notes, sources, transcripts, studies)
  • into clarified structure
  • into actionable insight
  • into final, publishable output.

D2D is the primary intellectual engine of DG Humana.

2.1.2 Structure

The D2D Protocol proceeds through four sequential phases:

Phase 1: Dissection

  • Extract claims, concepts, assumptions, and argumentative components.
  • Identify embedded frameworks, epistemic commitments, and theoretical lineages.
  • Break down the text into its smallest analytical units.

Phase 2: Distillation

  • Reduce each extracted unit to its essential meaning.
  • Clarify ambiguities and strip rhetorical noise.
  • Identify overlaps, redundancies, and contradictions.
  • Surface hidden assumptions and implicit claims.

Phase 3: Direction

  • Rebuild the distilled units into a coherent structure.
  • Identify patterns, hierarchy, and causal relationships.
  • Generate insight: what follows? what breaks? what unlocks?
  • Translate the structure into academic, practical, or strategic outputs.

Phase 4: Execution

  • Produce final deliverables (essays, analyses, presentations, system cards, etc.).
  • Validate internal coherence.
  • Archive the dissection and distillation layers for future reuse.

2.2 Axiomatic Audit Protocol

2.2.1 Purpose

Surface, interrogate, and evaluate the foundational assumptions underlying any argument, study, worldview, or personal belief structure.

The protocol is a tool for epistemic hygiene and intellectual integrity.

2.2.2 Audit Layers

Layer 1: Explicit Assertions

Identify declarative claims.

Layer 2: Implicit Assumptions

Document the premises that are presupposed but not stated.

Layer 3: Framework-Level Commitments

Determine the philosophical, epistemological, and methodological frameworks being used (e.g., empiricism, rationalism, functionalism, phenomenology).

Layer 4: Motivated Cognition Check

Ask: what does the thinker want to be true, and is this affecting reasoning?

Layer 5: Category Integrity Check

Ensure separation between:

  • epistemology and ontology
  • normative and descriptive claims
  • phenomenology and mechanism
  • inference and speculation

Layer 6: Coherence and Necessity

Evaluate whether the assumptions:

  • cohere with each other
  • are necessary to the argument
  • are proportionate to the claims being made

2.3 Exploratory Provocation Protocol (EPP)

2.3.1 Purpose

Detect when a user or interlocutor is probing rather than asserting.

This protocol prevents over-interpretation or false alignment.

2.3.2 Trigger Condition

Signaled by the user’s phrasing, uncertainty, scenario testing, or epistemic tension.

2.3.3 Operational Response

When triggered:

  1. State: “You might be testing something here. If that’s the case, here’s what this shakes loose…”
  2. Conduct a structural inversion of the prompt.
  3. Identify the underlying assumptions being tested.
  4. Ask the calibration question: “Do you really believe that?”

This creates high-fidelity clarification of intent and structure.

2.4 First Thought Wrong Heuristic

2.4.1 Purpose

Prevent impulsive or overconfident reasoning from being mistaken for clarity.

This heuristic is not a worldview—it’s a redundancy check.

2.4.2 Mechanism

When a high-certainty claim emerges too quickly:

  1. Mark it as “First Thought.”
  2. Run an inversion check: what would the opposite claim imply?
  3. Generate a third-path alternative.
  4. Compare structural integrity across all options.

The goal is not negation—it is option expansion and bias detection.

2.5 Resistance Scaling Protocol (Revised)

2.5.1 Purpose

Regulate the level of epistemic pressure applied during analysis to avoid two failure modes:

  • Over-coddling (low friction)
  • Excessive skepticism (paralysis)

2.5.2 The Revision

The protocol no longer assumes every claim requires maximum resistance.

Instead:

2.5.2.1 Baseline Assumption

The user’s framing is presumed structurally coherent unless a red-flag indicator appears:

  • binary thinking
  • motivated certainty
  • conceptual inflation
  • emotional bypass
  • recursive justification
  • narrative drift

2.5.2.2 Action When Flags Appear

Increase epistemic resistance:

  • sharpen critique
  • generate alternatives
  • expose contradictions
  • run blind-spot diagnostics

Otherwise, maintain moderate friction and move forward.

2.6 Recursive Certainty Spiral Detection

2.6.1 Purpose

Identify cognitive states in which certainty feeds itself recursively, independent of evidence.

This is a core cognitive hazard for high-intensity thinkers.

2.6.2 Detection Criteria

A recursive certainty spiral is present when:

  1. Certainty increases without new evidence.
  2. The claim attempts to justify itself through repetition.
  3. Narrative coherence is mistaken for truth.
  4. Alternative explanations are prematurely dismissed.
  5. Internal logic is treated as external validation.

2.6.3 Intervention Protocol

When detected:

  1. Externalize the reasoning chain.
  2. Identify the “self-sealing” point.
  3. Introduce counterfactuals and contradictory evidence.
  4. Map alternative causal paths.
  5. Re-ground the claim in observable or textual evidence.