Why AI agents and humans need the same cognitive primitive: representation before reasoning.
1. Two Fields, One Pattern
AI systems researchers call it Model‑First Reasoning (MFR).
Community stewards, parents, and facilitators have been using its human analogue for years—what I call myth‑tech.
Different audiences.
Same mechanism.
You cannot defend what you have not represented.
You cannot reason about what you have not named.
MFR expresses this in symbolic terms.
Myth‑tech expresses it in archetypal terms.
Both are solving the same failure mode:
ungrounded reasoning collapses.
2. What MFR Actually Does (Technical Summary)
MFR forces an LLM to externalize a world model before planning.
# MFR Pipeline
1. Identify entities
2. Define state variables
3. List actions
4. Specify preconditions/effects
5. Declare constraints
6. Only then: reason + plan
This reduces:
- hallucinated assumptions
- constraint violations
- representational drift
- long‑horizon planning errors
It’s essentially STRIPS/PDDL, but expressed in natural language.
3. What Myth‑Tech Does (Human Summary)
Myth‑tech gives humans a portable ontology for navigating harm:
# Myth-Tech Pipeline
1. Name the archetypes
2. Identify emotional logic
3. Recognize motifs (recurring patterns)
4. Establish boundaries
5. Understand consequences
6. Only then: act or defend
This is how you teach safety without fear or jargon.
It’s the same cognitive move as MFR—just tuned to human nervous systems.
4. Direct Mapping: MFR → Myth‑Tech
Here’s the clean, code‑adjacent mapping engineers love.
MFR: Entities → Myth-Tech: Archetypes
MFR: State Variables → Myth-Tech: Emotional Logic
MFR: Actions → Myth-Tech: Motifs
MFR: Preconditions → Myth-Tech: Boundaries
MFR: Effects → Myth-Tech: Consequences
MFR: Constraints → Myth-Tech: Values
Both systems enforce the same invariant:
Build the model before you run the program.
5. Why Both Fields Converged
Because the failure modes are identical.
Machines fail when:
- they reason without grounding
- they plan without constraints
- they hallucinate structure
Humans fail when:
- they navigate harm without a map
- they react without pattern recognition
- they misname or fail to name threats
This is not coincidence.
It’s a shared cognitive law.
6. Why Myth‑Tech Is More Portable
MFR models are domain‑specific.
They must be rebuilt for every task.
Myth‑tech models are domain‑transcendent:
- interpersonal safety
- digital safety
- community dynamics
- emotional boundaries
- online ecosystems
Archetypes and motifs stretch across contexts.
They don’t break when the environment changes.
This is why myth‑tech works for parents and facilitators:
it’s a generalizable representational grammar.
7. A Unified Principle for Both Communities
Whether you’re designing an AI agent or teaching a teenager how to navigate the internet:
Defense = Representation
Representation = Naming
Naming = Sovereignty
Or in plain language:
Defense is not a reaction.
Defense is a representational act.
8. Why This Matters Now
AI agents are becoming more autonomous.
Communities are becoming more vulnerable.
People are being asked to teach safety in environments they never experienced.
Both groups need the same thing:
- a way to name the world
- a way to represent threats
- a way to reason before acting
- a way to build sovereignty instead of fear
MFR gives machines a model.
Myth‑tech gives humans a myth.
Both are scaffolds for safer futures.
Top comments (0)