CONCEPT
Flow Thinking vs Map Thinking
Tversky's distinction between temporal-spatial thinking (processes, sequences, narratives) and structural-spatial thinking (hierarchies, categories, relationships) — two incompatible modes that AI collaboration forces into uneasy coexistence.
Flow thinking represents processes: user approaches, face is detected, response occurs, cycle resets. Map thinking represents structure: here are the functions, here are the classes, here are the parameters. Both are spatial, but they organize space along different axes — one temporal-causal, the other categorical-hierarchical. Tversky's research shows that human cognition moves fluidly between the two modes when they are adequately supported, and suffers specific friction when forced to translate between them. Software development before AI was largely the labor of translating flow thinking (what should happen) into map thinking (where the code lives), and AI's contribution is to absorb much of that translation.
In The You On AI Field Guide
The distinction illuminates why documentation failed builders even when it contained all the right information. A builder approaches a problem with a flow in mind. The documentation, organized alphabetically or hierarchically, presents a map. The information exists in both representations, but the mental operation required to navigate from flow to map