AIM Framework glossary
Information Gap Principle
Canonical definition
The Information Gap Principle is the principle that when Individuals experience A/I deficits whose true causes (preconscious mimetic transmission, diffuse institutional capture, Entanglement, lack of true causal information) exceed the computational tractability of available causal-inference systems, Confabulation defaults to agent-based causation ("and identifiable ‘someone’ is responsible") rather than systemic explanation, because human causal cognition is architecturally optimized for detecting agents (Predators, Prey, Rival, Collaborators) and does not spontaneously generate, as default explanatory completions, the distributed, preconscious, entangled processes or other lack of information that actually produce M-driven deficits; even I-led System 2 processing, when engaged under default closure-pressure, characteristically elaborates an agent-based Confabulation rather than an accurate structural diagnosis, because the agent-based candidate reaches Belief-fixation before a systemic Hypothesis has finished being built, so that structural diagnosis is rare rather than impossible, with the agent-based Confabulation serving the functional purpose of providing cognitive closure and actionable targets that allow downstream threat-response and social-coordination processes to operate.
Explanation
The Information Gap Principle explains why scapegoating consistently emerges when Individuals experience felt deficit under conditions of Mimetic capture. The human brain is architecturally designed for agent-based causal inference (detecting Predators, Prey, Rivals, and Collaborators) and does not by default compute the distributed, preconscious, entangled causes, or otherwise lacks the information, that actually produce M-driven deficits. When faced with the question "why do I lack sufficiency?", the causal-inference systems produce the only kind of answer they compute by default: someone (an agent) is responsible. This is not strategic selection of simple over complex explanations; it is architectural limitation. The scapegoat explanation emerges because it is the only explanation the cognitive machinery generates by default. The principle establishes that Confabulation is not failure of intelligence or effort, it is the brain's best available response to computationally intractable causation.
Epistemic status
Framework-Specific Principle