About

The Cognitive Drift is a writing project exploring human behaviour, success, and the social systems that shape outcomes over time.

The idea behind the site is simple: individuals and societies often drift away from what actually works.

Ideas that once made sense become habits. Incentives shift, but behaviours remain. Institutions defend familiar narratives long after conditions have changed. People continue following scripts they never consciously chose.

This slow divergence between belief and reality is what we might call cognitive drift.

The essays published here examine that drift across a range of topics — including human behaviour, success, technology, politics, and the forces that quietly shape how people think and act.

The aim is not to offer quick answers or ideological certainty, but to look more closely at the patterns beneath everyday assumptions.

Many of the most important forces shaping outcomes in life and society operate quietly: incentives, habits, narratives, and feedback loops that compound over time.

Understanding those patterns requires stepping outside the familiar scripts we inherit from culture, institutions, and conventional wisdom.

That is the purpose of this site.

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About the Author

Steve Floyd writes about human behaviour, decision-making, and the forces that shape success over time.

His essays explore why individuals and societies often drift away from what actually works.