Assimilation — Incorporating the New into the Old

Assimilation is the process by which new experience is incorporated into existing cognitive structures — the way an infant who has learned to grasp a rattle extends the grasping schema to a spoon, a ball, a finger. The schema remains unchanged; the world is made to fit the mind. Assimilation is conservative, preserving existing structures by fitting new experience into them. It is the complement of accommodation, and both operate in every cognitive act. In the AI encounter, assimilation produces the familiar defenses: 'AI is just a tool', 'AI doesn't really create, it just copies', 'AI is fake and doesn't count' — frameworks that preserve identity by denying the evidence that threatens it.