Paradigms & Perception

You’ll See It When You Believe It

Paradigms influence us daily but we’re often unaware of how they can limit or liberate us. Today we’re exploring how paradigms affect our perception by delving into the “Paradigm Effect.”

Paradigms can feel a bit abstract to work with, so I find metaphors useful. We’ve already noticed that paradigms are like a game. Another helpful metaphor to help us better grok paradigms is to see how they’re similar to a filter.

Paradigms as Filters

“Paradigms act as physiological filters ~ we quite literally see the world through our paradigms.” ~Joel Barker, Paradigms:The Business of Discovering the Future

The Upside

The world is complex. So are humans. That means in any single moment there is an overwhelming amount of information available to us.

“Paradigms are functional because they help us distinguish data that is important from that which is not. The rules tell us how to look at the data and then how to deal with it.” ~Joel Barker, Paradigms: The Business of Discovering the Future

That is one of the advantages of a paradigm. Paradigms help us attend to what bits of information are most relevant to the game we are playing, while not getting lost in the weeds of extraneous information. This helps us stay focused and efficient.

The Downside

But, if we’re not careful, this paradigm-as-a-filter perk can become problematic by (1)filtering out information we might actually need, or (2)self-reinforcing a paradigm which might not be serving us any longer.

“Any data that exists in the real world that does not fit your paradigm will have a difficult time getting through your filters. You will see little if any of it. The data that does fit into your paradigm, not only makes it through the filter, but is concentrated by the filtering process thus creating an illusion of even greater support for the paradigm.” (Joel Barker, Paradigms: The Business of Discovering the Future)

This is the “Paradigm Effect”

“What may be perfectly visible, perfectly obvious. to persons with one paradigm, may be, quite literally, invisible to persons with a different paradigm. This is the Paradigm Effect.” (Joel Barker, Paradigms: The Business of Discovering the Future)

George Lackoff, a cognitive linguist and philosopher, speaks to this phenomenon from a brain-based approach when discussing worldviews:

“We need to understand how the brain works. Ideas don’t float in the air, they’re in your neurocircuitry. If you have a worldview ~ your understanding of the world in general ~ then that’s a lot of neurocircuits. Those neurocircuits for a worldview are fixed. Once they are fixed, they become what you might call a “neurofilter”…you can only understand what your brain allows you to understand, so if you have only one worldview, you’re stuck to understand things that fit that worldview and if information comes in that doesn’t fit it, it will be either not noticed, ignored, ridiculed or attacked.” (George Lackoff interview with Tavis Smiley, :55–1:30)

How to Work with the Paradigm Effect

Be Aware

Being aware of the Paradigm Effect is the first step to working more effectively with it. It helps us begin to rethink the cliche, “I’ll believe it when I see it,” and understand that the reverse is more accurate, “I’ll see it when I believe it.”

Joel Barker explains, “Subtle vision is preceded by an understanding of the rules. To see well, we need paradigms.” He expands, “When I was explaining a concept to my students, many were unable to understand it even though the information was directly in front of them. But, as they began to understand the principles, they would say, one by one, ‘Oh, now I get it.’ What they were getting was the paradigm; what they were gaining was a significant change in vision.” (Joel Barker, Paradigms: The Business of Discovering the Future)

Choose Your Words Wisely

Once aware of the Paradigm Effect, we can take care to limit its downside by choosing our words carefully. When we hear an idea that we think is impossible, we are often apt to dismiss it. However, instead of declaring, “That’s impossible!”, Joel Barker recommends we try substituting the phrase, “Based on the paradigm we are practicing right now, we don’t know how to do it.” It’s a simple reframe that leaves the door of possibility open for big potential.

Magnifying the Power of Paradigms

One of the best “hacks” to magnifying the power of paradigms is to harness the wisdom of the collective.

“When we gather in groups of people…we aggregate the problem-solving power that each of us has with our specific paradigms to deal with the larger world…It is our diversity as a group that lets us deal with the complexity of the world through the application of many paradigms. And that makes the group much more capable than any single individual of dealing with the world in the long run.” (Joel Barker, Paradigms: The Business of Discovering the Future)

Key Takeaways

• Paradigms are like filters.
• The upside of this is paradigms help us discern what information is most relevant.
• The downside is that paradigms can block us from perceiving information that is right in front of our eyes.
• The Paradigm Effect: “What may be perfectly visible, perfectly obvious. to persons with one paradigm, my be, quite literally, invisible to persons with a different paradigm.”
• We can play the upside of paradigm-as-filter, and minimize the downside of this by (1) being aware of the Paradigm Effect, (2) substituting the phase, “That’s impossible!”, with, “Based on the paradigm we are practicing right now, we don’t know how to do it.” and (3) gather in groups to aggregate the problem solving power of our different paradigms.