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How to ThinkIn the Age of AI
Definitionv1DF-078

Attention debt

a cognitive deficit that accumulates through chronic attention splitting and manifests as exhaustion, poor judgment, and degraded cognitive performance, which compounds over time and cannot be perceived from within the depleted state

Why This Is a Definition

This definition establishes attention debt as a specific cognitive phenomenon with precise boundaries. It identifies the genus (cognitive deficit) and differentia (accumulation through attention splitting, manifestation as specific symptoms, compounding nature, and subjective invisibility). The definition distinguishes it from ordinary fatigue and explains its dangerous characteristic of being invisible to the person experiencing it. It uses the curriculum's own terminology and framework.