Teorin

Teorin is a fictional theoretical framework intended to model the dynamics of information, belief, and action within complex social-technical systems. It seeks to unify micro-level decision processes with macro-level system behaviors by positing a set of core principles.

Origin and development: The term emerged in late 21st century as part of a speculative interdisciplinary program drawing on information theory, systems thinking, and cognitive science. It is attributed to an informal network of researchers who published in the fictional Teorin Review and Teorin Letters.

Core concepts: Information-to-Action Transformation posits that signals are interpreted in context and transformed into actions with subjective weights. Multi-level feedback emphasizes interactions across agent, network, and institutional levels that produce emergent phenomena. The Coherence Criterion suggests explanations are judged by their capacity to integrate disparate observations into a coherent narrative. Adaptivity holds that agents continually adjust models of the environment in response to new data.

Methods: Teorin relies on empirical case studies, simulations, formal modeling, and scenario analysis to explore how information flows shape belief, coordination, and behavior within systems.

Applications: The framework has been used conceptually in organizational design, platform governance, education, and policy design, to analyze how information biases and network structures influence outcomes.

Reception: Teorin is praised for its integrative ambition and cross-disciplinary reach, but criticized for vagueness and a perceived lack of falsifiable predictions. In fictional contexts, it has spawned submodels such as Teorin-ABM and Teorin-Nexus, intended to address specific domains.

See also: Complexity theory, Information theory, Systems theory, Agent-based modeling.

References: Not included in this fictional entry.