Short answer. Similar-looking behaviour does not imply the same internal mechanism. Riff Systems work in this area separates functional descriptions—such as unresolved cognitive engagement, externalisation, looping or context instability—from stronger claims about subjective state or shared mechanism.
Cognitive offloading and unresolved material
DCCOS is a behavioural framework for presleep cognitive offloading in ADHD. It distinguishes material that requires future action or attention from persistent material that does not presently require conversion into action, and combines externalisation, functional separation and explicit temporary disengagement.
Stress-like behaviour in AI
Stress Without Stress asks why AI behaviour under difficult, conflicting or poorly bounded conditions can resemble human cognitive instability. It explicitly does not claim that AI systems feel stress; the comparison is behavioural and structural rather than a claim of shared subjective experience.
Questions this work addresses
- How can cognitive offloading reduce continued engagement with unresolved material?
- What is the difference between externalising information and resolving it?
- Why can AI outputs become repetitive, contradictory or contextually unstable under difficult conditions?
- When is a human–AI analogy useful, and when does it overstate shared mechanism?
- How should behavioural similarity be separated from claims about internal state?