Published January 18, 2026 | Version v1
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The Informational Preconditions of Meaning: A Structural Tendency Theorem on Civilizational Trade-offs Between Progress and Human Well-Being

Authors/Creators

  • 1. Institute of Integrative and Interdisciplinary Research

Description

This paper introduces the Informational Preconditions of Meaning, a theoretical framework explaining why civilizational progress tends to diminish individual experiences of meaning. Drawing on information theory, bounded rationality, evolutionary psychology, and systems theory, we argue that the attenuation of meaning is not primarily a cultural accident or moral failure but a structural tendency inherent in the scaling of complex adaptive systems. Meaning is operationalized as a function of the mutual information between actions and perceived outcomes, modulated by valence and goal congruence. We demonstrate that increasing system capacity through abstraction typically reduces this quantity for cognitively bounded agents under ordinary conditions.

The paper develops a Theory of Compensatory Meaning Infrastructure, identifying four mechanisms through which societies can partially offset meaning loss: abstraction compression, representational augmentation, auxiliary feedback channels, and process reorientation—the latter drawing on phylogenetically ancient motivational systems. We establish a fundamental tetralemma showing that no single compensation mechanism can simultaneously maximize meaning density, productive capacity, scale stability, and universal applicability. In addition, we identify fatal mistakes in meaning infrastructure—including feedback decoupled from value, excessive abstraction without compensation, and superficial interventions—that accelerate systemic pathology.

Finally, we situate the theory within existing intellectual traditions and clarify its scope limitations and conditions of falsifiability. The proposed framework offers practical implications for institutional design while acknowledging that it describes a well-supported structural tendency rather than an inviolable physical law.

Keywords: meaning, information theory, civilizational progress, bounded rationality, alienation, systems theory, well-being, institutional design, process motivation, evolutionary psychology

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2025-01-18

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