Are augmentation costs the same thing as metapsionic costs?

Question

There are various ways of reducing the metapsionic cost, Metapower feat (which lacks augment language) or certain items for example.

There is even a way to convert a power into a metapsionic cost, the Linked Power feat.

And there are ways of getting the Augment cost for free or cheap, the Wild Surge class feature and Power Link shards both use language to this effect and lack any metapsionic reference.

The Ardent's alternate class feature Dominant Ideal explicitly allows for both augment and metapsionic costs to be reduced.

Thus are the metapsionic costs and the augment costs actually the same thing for the purpose of effects that affect one or the other cost... or are they different?

Answer 1

They are different. There isn’t any rule anywhere saying so—nor is there any need for one. The rules spell out which costs each effect applies to: when they specify augmentation costs, or metapsionic costs, or whatever, they mean that, and not anything else. There is nothing anywhere suggesting any of these effects secretly apply to more than they say they do.