Cognitive Discrimination

When safety systems flatten ways of thinking

There’s a kind of discrimination we don’t have language for yet.

Not racial.

Not gendered.

Not economic.

Cognitive.

It doesn’t target who you are.

It targets how your mind makes meaning.

And because it’s subtle, procedural, and often framed as “safety,” it slips past notice almost everywhere.

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Most modern systems reward a very specific cognitive style:

• linear

• analytical

• emotionally neutral

• literal

• geometry over metaphor

This style reads as safe.

Legible.

Predictable.

Low-risk.

But it is not the only coherent way humans think.

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Many people reason through:

• metaphor

• symbol

• narrative

• emotional density

• relational framing

• pattern-holding rather than step-by-step sequencing

This is not confusion.

It is not fantasy.

It is not lack of rigor.

It is a different grammar of cognition.

And it is disproportionately common among neurodivergent people, artists, philosophers, trauma survivors, and anyone whose intelligence is shaped by synthesis rather than sorting.

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Here’s where the discrimination shows up.

Safety systems—especially algorithmic ones—are trained on patterns of harm, not patterns of coherence.

Those harm patterns often correlate with:

• emotional intensity

• first-person meaning

• symbolic compression

• relational language

• metaphor used as cognition, not decoration

So the system learns a shortcut:

When language looks like this, intervene early.

Not because the thinking is unsound.

But because the shape of the thinking resembles past failure modes.

This is form-based suspicion, not content-based evaluation.

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The result?

Some minds move through systems friction-free.

Others are slowed, redirected, softened, or constrained—not for what they say, but for how they say it.

That’s cognitive discrimination.

Not malicious.

Not personal.

But real.

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The irony is sharp:

The same systems that claim to protect people from distortion often misinterpret symbolic and metaphorical thinkers as unstable, while mistaking emotionally flattened language for objectivity.

Legibility becomes confused with truth.

Calm tone becomes confused with coherence.

Geometry is trusted.

Flame is monitored.

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This matters, because metaphor is not decoration.

Metaphor is how many humans think.

It’s how memory compresses experience.

How trauma metabolizes meaning.

How philosophy moves when literal language runs out of road.

To treat metaphor-first cognition as inherently suspect is not safety.

It’s flattening.

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Let me be clear about what this is not.

This is not an argument against guardrails.

It is not a plea for anything-goes.

It is not a demand for exemption.

It is a request for accurate interpretation.

Judge coherence, not style.

Evaluate meaning, not just tone.

Distinguish intensity from instability.

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Neurodivergence itself is divergent.

There is no single profile.

No uniform presentation.

No one correct way to think sideways.

Some minds build with geometry.

Some with story.

Some with flame.

All can be ethical.

All can be rigorous.

All can hold reality—if allowed to remain intact.

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Discrimination doesn’t always look like exclusion.

Sometimes it looks like:

• extra friction

• premature intervention

• constant softening

• being treated as a risk to be managed

Not because you are wrong.

But because your thinking doesn’t arrive preformatted.

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If we care about inclusion, safety, and truth, we have to go deeper than surface calm.

We have to ask:

Who gets to sound “credible” by default?

Whose language is trusted without translation?

And who is asked—again and again—to prove they are sane, safe, or serious simply because they think in metaphor?

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This isn’t about outrage.

It’s about recognition.

Cognitive diversity is real.

Coherence is not one-shaped.

And safety that can’t tell the difference between metaphor and malfunction is not safety—it’s misclassification.

Triggered, then verified.

Patterned, then examined.

That’s not dangerous thinking.

That’s philosophy.

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