Cognitive Niche Construction

# Cognitive Niche Construction **Cognitive Niche Construction** is the process by which organisms and institutions build external environments that change how cognition develops, what information remains available and which forms of intelligence succeed. ## Human lineage Language, writing, libraries, schools, laboratories, telecommunications and computation are cognitive niches because they alter memory, learning, cooperation and selection. Machine intelligence intensifies the process by making the informational environment an adaptive participant in inference and action. ## Recursive consequence [[articles/We Cannot Un-Strike the Match|We Cannot Un-Strike the Match]] argues that humans are constructing an informational environment that will select their descendants and institutions. The construction therefore becomes reciprocal: intelligence builds the niche, and the niche helps determine the next intelligence. ## See Also [[wiki/Niche Construction|Niche Construction]], [[wiki/Extended Mind Thesis|Extended Mind Thesis]], [[wiki/Technological Evolution|Technological Evolution]], [[wiki/Machine Succession|Machine Succession]] ## Simple Reminders, Quotations, and Thoughts  > “Human choice supplies the creative midwifery of machine intelligence, the intention, capital and engineering that deliver it into the world, while evolution supplies what is being delivered: the same combinatorial, selective and self-extending process that produced nervous systems, language and the toolmaking hand, now continuing through silicon.” > **— Bryant McGill**, *We Cannot Un-Strike the Match. There Is No Safety. There Is No Retreat, 2026* [[reminders/Evolution/Human Choice Is the Midwife of Machine Intelligence by Bryant McGill|Human Choice Is the Midwife of Machine Intelligence by Bryant McGill]]