[suraci]

IMO, cognitive load is the complexity of 'the scale of knowledge you need to build the solution (the problem space).'

However, complexity also comes from the solution itself — caching, microservice architecture, or even poorly chosen variable names.

So, complexity is irreducible, but it’s not a constant.

Certain solutions partition the problem space, thereby partitioning the complexity. This reduces the local complexity and, consequently, the cognitive load. However, the global complexity still remains and can even increase.