Selection of information ​

There are two basic ways of selecting information: late selection and early selection.

Late selection of information occurs according to the principle of "load more" and is associated with S1. Initially, a lot of information about objects is loaded into the brain, and then a more detailed processing of the objects that have attracted attention occurs. Late selection is often automatically activated when you are doing something not very important, for example, exchanging a few jokes with strangers in line at an ATM.

Early selection occurs according to the principle of "choose better" and is associated with S2. Initially, individual channels for information intake (perception channels of agents) are cut off, as well as individual objects that should not be important. Early selection is usually automatically activated when you need to focus on performing important tasks.

You can consciously enhance information selection by choosing the appropriate method for the situation. How to choose the right method:

• If it is unclear what the objects are and how to work with them, precision in the decision-making process is important, and enlightenment is needed to solve the problem but it is unclear how to achieve it, then late selection is used ("gather maximum information about objects and then integrate it into the model");
• If it is roughly understood what objects are, what operations to carry out, and speed is important, then early selection is used ("discard unnecessary information about objects using existing knowledge and focus on determining relationships between them").

It is also possible to combine late and early selection. When modeling, you:

• Think about who will use the model (or description) and choose a description language that is understandable to the recipient, thus eliminating unnecessary languages. For example, writing a user manual for equipment not in the language of the design engineer but in the language of the equipment operator (early selection, excluding languages that do not lead to achieving the goal);
• Limit the levels of consideration. For example, as a conflictologist, you examine the "behavior of people" during communication, but are not interested in "hormones", i.e., the components of the human body (early selection, excluding unnecessary levels of consideration);
• Choose the appropriate level of abstraction. For example, it is important for high-ranking agents to create descriptions for classes of situations, such as describing the company's values that an employee should follow when faced with a new situation, rather than writing instructions for a specific process (early selection, excluding layers of information that are too concrete or too abstract);
• Choose notation and modeling tools. For example, creating a role table in a modeler (early selection, eliminating unnecessary ways of providing information);
• Choose disciplines that contain the necessary information about objects. For example, choose the discipline of "conflict resolution" in which you will search for the necessary information (early selection, excluding disciplines that are clearly unsuitable);
• Choose quality sources of information. For example, books on nonviolent communication (early selection, excluding clearly poor sources of information);
• Study the selected sources of information and take notes (late selection, more information about the objects is needed, it is unclear which information will be useful);
• Focus on the selected objects and describe the relationships between them, the available operations with the objects. Here, depending on the situation, you can apply late selection ("describe in detail"), for example, when it is unclear exactly what will be useful, or when it is necessary to localize the "blind spot" in the description. Alternatively, early selection when only the necessary information is described, but deeply enough to achieve the goal.

Early selection makes a significant contribution to the success of modeling, increasing the accuracy of the model at each step and allowing resource savings through concentration during modeling. With some practice, most of the early selection (before choosing notation and modeling tools) can be done quite quickly.