Dysfunctional Information: How Systems Break Down From the Inside
If functional information is what does work in a human system, then dysfunctional information is what prevents work from being done. It doesn’t just sit there quietly. It has structural effects — predictable ones — that shape capability, behaviour, and the future a system can reach.
Most leaders never see this. They focus on behaviour, motivation, or communication, without realising that the deeper issue is informational. The system isn’t failing because people don’t care. It’s failing because the architecture they’re operating from is being distorted by patterns that no longer serve them.
Dysfunctional information behaves in three primary ways.
1. It increases noise
Noise is not distraction. Noise is distortion.
It’s the emotional static, cultural residue, inherited assumptions, and habitual interpretations that make everything feel urgent, personal, or overwhelming. Noise consumes bandwidth. It narrows perception. It hides what matters and amplifies what doesn’t.
In physics, this is entropy — the drift toward disorder and the loss of usable energy.
In human systems, dysfunctional information is the source of that drift. It reduces the amount of functional information available to the system, making clarity harder and capability weaker.
2. It weakens structure
This is the effect most leaders underestimate.
Dysfunctional information doesn’t just create noise. It corrodes the architecture itself. It undermines the internal patterns that hold capability together. It creates contradictions, weakens constraints, and makes the system brittle under pressure.
A team can look fine on the surface while its internal structure is quietly decaying.
In physical terms, this is structural fatigue — the slow breakdown of integrity that eventually leads to failure. In human terms, it’s the erosion of coherence.
When structure weakens, capability collapses. Not because people lack motivation, but because the architecture they’re operating from cannot support the demands placed upon it.
3. It creates false patterns
This is the most subtle — and the most dangerous — effect.
Dysfunctional information can create the illusion of coherence. It forms patterns that feel meaningful but are structurally wrong. These patterns become:
fear‑based interpretations
identity stories that no longer fit
cultural scripts that distort reality
emotional reflexes that masquerade as truth
In dynamical systems, these are false attractors — patterns that pull behaviour toward the wrong equilibrium.
This is why people repeat the same mistakes even when they “know better.” The architecture is organised around a misleading pattern.
The deeper truth
Functional information builds capability. Dysfunctional information constrains it.
Functional information strengthens architecture. Dysfunctional information destabilises it.
Functional information reveals signal. Dysfunctional information amplifies noise.
This is why readiness matters so profoundly. Readiness is the only force in the system that can reorganise structure, reduce noise, and remove dysfunctional information.
We are bounded expressions of unbounded information. The patterns we operate from determine what we can see, what we can attempt, and what we can achieve. When dysfunctional information dominates, the system drifts toward entropy. When readiness increases, the system becomes coherent again — and capability returns.
This is the quiet physics of human breakdown and renewal.