Cognitive Trap or Augmented Self-Efficacy?

It's a Cognitive Trap

Transactive Memory & The Google Effect: First identified by Yale researchers studying internet search (Fisher et al., 2015), this is the tendency for humans to confuse access to information with personal knowledge. When you are plugged into a system that can instantly write a Python script, draft a legal memo, or architect a database, your brain absorbs the tool into your own cognitive identity. You feel smarter because your "extended mind" is smarter.
AI-Augmented Dunning-Kruger: Studies on human-AI interaction (such as Fernandes & Welsch, 2025) found that using generative AI dramatically flattens the traditional Dunning-Kruger curve. Instead of novices slowly realizing how much they don't know, AI's hyper-confident, articulate outputs mask the user's knowledge gaps. You get the dopamine hit of shipping a finished product without experiencing the friction that usually teaches you how hard the domain actually is.
The Illusion of Explanatory Depth: This is the belief that you understand how a complex system works when you really only understand the surface narrative. When AI bridges all the painful execution steps in the middle, it induces a state of "effortless fluency"—making you feel like the master architect of a system you might struggle to debug from scratch if the power went out.

Cognitive Leverage (or "God Mode"): For decades, execution was gated by syntax and specialized mechanics—knowing the exact API, the right financial formula, or the CSS quirks. If you already have strong systems thinking, taste, and architectural judgment, AI removes the mechanical friction. The euphoria you feel isn't a cognitive bias; it's the sudden removal of the bottleneck between your vision and a working prototype.
The "Centaur" State: Borrowed from freestyle chess (where a human-AI team beats either a grandmaster or a supercomputer alone), this is the flow state of high-agency orchestration. You aren't claiming to be a 10x specialist in every domain; you are recognizing that as a director with an infinite fleet of tireless interns, your effective range has multiplied tenfold.