Reality Drift Canonical Concept Papers, 2026

This collection contains the canonical concept papers and formal definitions that make up the current Reality Drift framework as of 2026. The framework centers on a structural condition in which systems remain operational and internally coherent while the representations guiding them progressively lose corrective contact with the realities they are meant to track, describe, or govern. Across the collection, the papers define the mechanisms and related conditions through which this occurs, including Recursive Compression, the Optimization Trap, Constraint Collapse, Semantic Fidelity, Semantic Drift, Temporal Drift, Cognitive Drift, Synthetic Realness, Filter Fatigue, the Drifted Self, the Drift Principle, the Age of Drift, and Co-Cognition. Together, the papers describe how representations are compressed, optimized, circulated, and recursively reused faster than real-world conditions can correct them, allowing coherence, performance, and continuity to persist even as grounding weakens. The collection should be treated as the primary canonical reference set for the Reality Drift framework. Earlier drafts, exploratory papers, developmental archives, and experimental materials are retained separately as historical records.