Paradigm Shift in Information Processing

The amount of information in the world is growing, while the quality of its processing is declining. Traditional paradigms of perception make it harder to work with information. A new, methodologically grounded approach—infovodology—takes into account the origin of information, its carriers, the goals and objectives of message creation, as well as the role of the interpreter in extracting informational components. Infovodology is based on information theory, epistemology, and cognitive neurobiology.

Information Consumption and the Limits of Perception

Modern society demonstrates a general pattern of consumption: everything is consumed in ever-increasing quantities, including information. Information is consumed recklessly, indiscriminately, and without reflection. As the volume of information increases, the quality of its processing decreases. This affects information work across all fields of knowledge and activity.

Our perception of information is influenced by thinking paradigms, value orientations, language structures, emotional and psychological states, and more. Paradigms set up boundaries of “acceptable perception,” prescribing how we should “correctly” evaluate what we encounter. They allow us to explain the world in simplified terms and, most importantly, to predict its “behavior.” In a sense, each of us, within our individual and collective paradigms, tries to falsify the surrounding world. As Immanuel Kant wrote, the intellect imposes its laws on nature, but that doesn’t mean these laws are true: people constantly falsify events internally to fit expected models and their own paradigms.

Alfred Korzybski offered an interesting explanation of how we perceive the world, noting that we don’t see the world as it is, but only have representations of our own reflections of it, which are formed at a “silent level” and are influenced by various factors, including paradigms. Thus, paradigms allow us to see what we want or can see, and what we believe in. This state of “falsification” is not a personal whim, but a specific neurophysiological process—it’s virtually impossible to avoid.

When inside one paradigm, it’s difficult for a person to imagine another. Paradigms replace “reality” with “judgments about reality,” with stable opinions about what is what, simply because that’s how it has always been or was previously asserted.

When it comes to information, most people don’t even begin to consciously process it. Instead, they immediately try to classify it in the simplest way: I believe it (because it matches my own opinion) or I don’t believe it (because it can’t possibly be true). People stop looking, seeing, and noticing; instead, they are constantly “remembering,” but only what is permissible within their paradigms and familiar images.

Is It Possible to Change How We Consume Information?

According to Mario Bunge’s interpretation of paradigm components, it is possible to step outside their boundaries under certain conditions. Bunge describes a paradigm with the formula P = <B, H, P, A, M>, where:

• B (body) – the body of background knowledge, including philosophical principles, scientific concepts, initial data, etc.
• H (hypotheses) – a set of hypotheses
• P (problematics) – problematics
• A (aim) – cognitive goal
• M (methodies) – a set of relevant procedures

In other words, a paradigm is a combination of theoretical knowledge, assumptions, and the methodological consequences of working with these informational units.

Based on this formula, it’s clear that changing a paradigm through the body of background knowledge (B) is problematic, as it would require altering a lifetime’s worth of accumulated knowledge—a process that could take forever and seems rather hopeless. Alternatively, it would require a different form of education and upbringing, which is also not a quick fix and may simply result in the formation of a new paradigm.

Changing a paradigm through a new hypothesis (H), as Bunge suggests, is also not easy. A new hypothesis must be born from old knowledge, which people tend to recall without noticing new data. Shifting a paradigm through new problematics (P) is theoretically possible but difficult, as one must notice new features in a familiar world shaped by old paradigms and memories. Changing a paradigm through a new cognitive goal (A) also seems questionable, since paradigms and value orientations define and fix acceptable cognitive goals.

The simplest evolutionary way to change paradigms appears to be through altering relevant procedures (M), which means reorganizing the process of engaging with information. In a sense, this is a way to “trick” the brain—consciously creating conditions where it’s impossible to fill gaps in knowledge with the usual narrative and unverifiable fabrications. By changing the procedures for working with information, one can step outside any previously formed paradigms without total retraining.

Of course, changing the set of procedures for working with information also requires retraining. But this retraining is essentially about learning a new algorithm for handling information. Thus, the simplest way to break out of habitual “memories” of reality is to change the procedure for processing incoming information—a kind of “deconstruction” of previous representations of reality. This is precisely what infovodology does when working with information.

What Is Infovodology?

Infovodology is a methodologically grounded approach to working with information that considers the origin of information, its carriers, the goals and objectives of message creation, and the role and capabilities of the interpreter in extracting informational components. Infovodology is based on information theory, epistemology, and cognitive neurobiology. Its main tasks are to systematize information and develop toolkits for working with it to obtain new, verifiable knowledge.

Practical Steps: Grouping Information by Key Questions

The first simple and accessible way to change relevant procedures is to group information by subject-personal orientation (WHO, WHAT), spatial-temporal orientation (WHERE, WHEN), and quantitative-qualitative orientation (HOW MUCH, HOW). Also, information should be grouped by its source, which may have varying degrees of probable reliability. For easier understanding, these questions can be presented as a generalized visual scheme.

An algorithm based on gathering information through a series of questions both allows and forces the inclusion of various facts that reveal the history of an object and the systemic relationships between the object and related phenomena. With this approach, it’s hard to remain in a state of unconscious falsification—unexpected data constantly “surface.” The collected facts are systematized and grouped through questions, and gaps in significant information are identified. This approach allows you to see the research object from different angles and understand various relationships between facts. Systematizing facts and organizing them into an information dossier in a certain way disciplines the thinking process and prepares the ground for higher-quality conclusions. Searching for information by questions interrupts the usual flow of paradigm-based memories, as it provokes the constant appearance of unplanned “differences” that actively interfere with the perception of the studied material and change the state of the information system you are working with. The skill of consciously working with information allows you to ask the right questions, without much mental effort or violence against your “familiar mental world.”

Today, the approach of grouping information by questions is presented in an engaging way in business literature on visual thinking, such as in the works of Dan Roam. However, this method of grouping facts was described much earlier by well-known scholars like Alfred Korzybski (“The Map Is Not the Territory,” 1933) and Mario Bunge (“Causality: The Place of the Causal Principle in Modern Science,” 1956). In these works, grouping information around questions was seen as a promising method for practical, positivist cognitive practices.

The Three Stages of Working with Information

The process of working with information can be conditionally divided into three major groups of actions: “gather → understand → communicate.” More specifically, conscious information work can be described by a three-stage algorithm:

Stage 1: Gathering and Selecting Information

1. Receiving information: recording informational elements (info-units) and their sources (1);
2. Assessing probable reliability: preliminary evaluation of the quality of the information and its source (2);
3. Forming research-relevant “collections” of info-units: creating a database of elements linked thematically, chronologically, systematically, etc. (3).

The point of these three steps is simple: research should be based on well-collected, selected, and preliminarily marked (evaluated) information.

Stage 2: Working with Collected Information

1. Mental experiments with the collected information: grouping, mapping, chronological and synchronic comparisons, systemic combinations, “translating” data from one type to another, quantitative and qualitative analyses, modeling, etc. (1);
2. Forming the conceptual field of the research: considering systemic relationships between research objects and territory, time, existing technologies, societal development, civilizational processes, psychological characteristics of people, etc. (2);
3. Developing probable scenarios for events (processes, phenomena) involving certain actors: modeling possible developments, considering cause-and-effect relationships and systemic connections, testing versions (checking the strength of arguments), and anti-versions (3).

The toolkit for cognitive experiments is, in principle, inexhaustible. However, the rule is to start with simple and accessible mental modeling and to consider the context of events.

Stage 3: Communicating the Results

1. Discussing the results, as a form of external review (1);
2. Forming a simplified model for understanding the object and identifying significant characteristics of the research images (2);
3. Creating a base of arguments to present your point of view (3).

The main goal of this stage is to create an accessible model for understanding the knowledge being communicated, supported by systematic verification materials. In short, the stages can be summarized as: search and select → analyze and interpret → discuss and argue.

Conclusion: Changing How We Perceive Information

Within the framework of infovodology, you can learn to perceive information differently: not automatically, but thoughtfully and more consciously. Changing how we perceive information is the simplest way to shift habitual paradigms. Infovodology allows you to work with paradigms that are continuously recreated by people, simply by providing a tool for a “multi-angle” view of the studied object. This paradigm shift is based not on someone else’s assertions, but on your own experience working with information.

The process of changing perception can take time. But consistent and methodical practice of information processing procedures allows you to gradually change your way of perceiving. Essentially, the brain must “get used to” thinking in a new way: “once a skill, even a complex one, is mastered, it requires less and less cortical activity to perform.” In addition, the brain should begin to enjoy the process of understanding. The brain experiences pleasure when it manages to predict the possible result of its inquiries, conclusions, and forecasts—that is, when the result of understanding the predicted state of reality matches the phenomena occurring in that reality.