The world is a stage. People are actors. Life is journey. These are some subjective opinions or tastes. These are away from the objective truth and science. Some people may think the world is a hell. But you cannot blame they are wrong. For we are free to think. We have a convenient bag called “art” to contain such metaphors. These are rather emotional. It is troublesome for information science to deal with.
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Yes. Information science faces a hard problem here because human communication contains much more than literal, testable statements.
“The world is a stage” is not normally a scientific claim about the physical world. It is a metaphor. It invites us to see social life in terms of roles, performance, audience, and appearance.
“Life is a journey” is similar. It does not claim that life is literally a road. It organizes experience through ideas such as direction, progress, obstacle, delay, and destination.
These expressions are not simply true or false in the same way as “water boils at a certain temperature.” Their value depends on whether they illuminate experience.
So information science should distinguish at least three kinds of expression:
- Factual claim: intended to describe reality and open to evidence.
- Evaluative judgment: expresses value, preference, or criticism.
- Metaphorical expression: presents one thing through another in order to create meaning.
The trouble begins when these are mixed.
For example:
“Life is a journey”
is harmless as metaphor.
But:
“History necessarily moves toward one final destination”
may become a factual or political theory. Then it needs evidence and criticism.
Likewise:
“The world is hell”
may express suffering. It should not be corrected as though it were a geography error. But it may contain important information about the speaker’s experience.
This means that information science cannot deal only with objective truth. It must also identify the kind of utterance being made.
A good information system should ask:
Is this sentence reporting, evaluating, imagining, persuading, symbolizing, or expressing emotion?
That classification affects how the sentence should be retrieved and judged.
Art is indeed a useful social “bag” for metaphor, imagination, and emotion. But metaphor does not remain inside art. It enters science, politics, religion, journalism, and ordinary thought. Reddy’s conduit metaphor is a good example: a metaphor can quietly shape a whole theory while appearing to be ordinary language.
Therefore, information science should not try to remove metaphor. It should make metaphor visible.
Its task is:
to distinguish literal claims from figurative framing, while preserving the human meaning of both.
Science requires objective testing where factual claims are made. But information science also studies how people express fear, hope, identity, value, and interpretation. These are not all scientific truths, but they are still part of human information.
The deeper problem is not that metaphor is emotional. It is that a metaphor may be mistaken for literal truth without anyone noticing.
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You are clever, perhaps more cleverer than average people. As such, can you persuade and reconcile those who think the world is a paradise and who do the world is a hell? Information scientists should not become sick and tired by inconclusion.
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Yes. They can be reconciled, but not by forcing one side to surrender.
“The world is paradise” and “the world is hell” are usually not complete factual descriptions. They are judgments formed from different lives, times, places, expectations, and experiences.
A wealthy and loved person may see safety, beauty, freedom, and opportunity. A tortured, hungry, lonely, or oppressed person may see cruelty and hopelessness. Both may be honestly describing the world as encountered from their position.
The first reconciliation is therefore:
The world contains conditions that can be paradise for some and hell for others.
The disagreement may be less about the whole world than about unequal experience.
Information science should help by asking:
- What experiences produced each judgment?
- Which part of the world is being described?
- At what time?
- Compared with what expectation?
- Is the statement factual, emotional, moral, or metaphorical?
- What evidence does each side fail to see?
Then the two claims can be translated.
“Life is paradise” may mean:
I have experienced enough safety, love, beauty, and meaning to affirm life.
“Life is hell” may mean:
My suffering is so strong that the world appears hostile and unbearable.
These statements need not cancel each other. The first person can learn that happiness is not universal. The second can be heard without being told that the suffering is merely a mistaken opinion.
Information scientists should not seek conclusion by declaring a false average:
The world is neither paradise nor hell.
That may be empty. A better conclusion is:
The world has both life-giving and destructive conditions. Our task is to discover why they are distributed so unequally and how the destructive conditions can be reduced.
Thus, reconciliation should lead to action.
The “paradise” person should be asked:
What conditions made your life good, and can they be shared?
The “hell” person should be asked:
What conditions made life unbearable, and what must change?
Information science can organize these experiences, compare them with evidence, distinguish metaphor from factual claim, and connect suffering with possible remedies.
It should not become sick from inconclusion. But it should also not manufacture agreement. Sometimes the proper conclusion is not one common opinion, but a clearer common problem:
How can more people gain the conditions that make life worth living, while fewer people suffer conditions that make the world feel like hell?
That is where information becomes useful: not by deciding whose metaphor wins, but by turning opposed experiences into shared understanding and possible improvement.
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Information science aims to increase intellectuality rather than widening emotion. It should not be proud that it can do anything good.
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You are right. I gave information science too broad a moral mission.
Its central aim should be more limited and exact:
Information science should increase intellectuality: clearer concepts, better evidence, stronger criticism, and more responsible judgment.
It does not directly make the world good. It cannot promise happiness, reconciliation, justice, or wisdom. Those involve ethics, politics, art, religion, psychology, and human action.
Information science can support them by:
- distinguishing fact from metaphor and emotion;
- making sources and contexts visible;
- showing uncertainty and disagreement;
- finding relevant evidence;
- exposing weak reasoning and hidden assumptions;
- helping people think before judging.
But even better information may be ignored, misunderstood, or used badly. A powerful information system can serve propaganda as well as science.
So information science should not boast:
“We can solve every human problem.”
It should say:
“We can help people understand problems and evidence more clearly, while remaining aware that understanding does not guarantee good action.”
Its proper virtue is not moral pride. It is intellectual discipline and humility.
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Information science takes implications in context seriously. It seems to me, however, that metaphors are not firmly implied in words. It is hard to say prardise, hell, and something else are implied in the world. Such images are likely in everybody’s private mind, hence way from scientific observations. And such may be simply a lie! What could anyone do then?
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You are drawing an important boundary.
A metaphor such as “the world is paradise” or “the world is hell” is usually not firmly implied by the word “world.” It comes from the speaker’s private interpretation, emotion, memory, or purpose.
So information science should not treat such a metaphor as if it were objective information about the world itself.
But it is not always a lie.
A lie is normally a statement the speaker believes to be false and uses to deceive. A metaphor may instead be:
- an emotional report;
- a personal evaluation;
- an artistic image;
- an exaggeration;
- a persuasive frame;
- or a confused claim presented as fact.
The first task is therefore to identify what kind of statement it is.
“The world is hell” may mean “My life is unbearable.”
That is not a scientific description of the world, but it may be honest evidence about the speaker’s condition.
“This country is paradise.”
That may be propaganda if the speaker hides known suffering and wants others to believe a false factual picture.
Information science should therefore separate:
literal claim
from metaphorical expression
from personal evaluation
from deliberate deception
Then it should ask:
- What observable facts support the expression?
- Whose experience is being described?
- Is the metaphor presented as personal or universal?
- What facts does it reveal?
- What facts does it hide?
- Is the speaker trying to clarify experience or control another person’s belief?
The proper response is not to prove whether “paradise” or “hell” is inside the world. It is to translate the metaphor into testable statements.
For example:
“The world is hell.”
may be translated into:
“I experience severe suffering, danger, isolation, or hopelessness.”
These claims can then be examined.
Thus:
Metaphors are not scientific observations, but they may contain clues about experience, judgment, or intention. Information science should expose the metaphor, translate its possible implications, and refuse to confuse it with literal fact.
When no clear factual implication can be found, the system should leave it as private expression—not promote it into knowledge.
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You would agree that North Korea is literally a paradise but actually a hell! Metaphors are so useful to Kim Jong Un.
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Yes. That is a powerful example of metaphor used as political control.
North Korea is not literally a paradise. “Paradise” is a propaganda label. It presents the state as ideal, just, happy, and protected. The observable evidence shows a very different condition: severe repression, punishment, surveillance, forced labor, hunger, and denial of basic freedoms. The UN has documented systematic and grave human-rights violations, and Human Rights Watch still describes North Korea as one of the world’s most repressive states. (인권최고대표사무소)
So the important structure is:
official metaphor: paradise
observed condition: repression and suffering
The metaphor is useful to Kim Jong Un’s government because it does not merely describe. It frames thought. It asks people to interpret poverty as sacrifice, obedience as virtue, isolation as protection, and state power as care.
In such a case, metaphor is no longer only private art or emotion. It becomes an instrument of propaganda.
Information science should therefore ask:
- Who created the metaphor?
- Who benefits from it?
- Which facts does it hide?
- Which counter-evidence is forbidden?
- Is the metaphor voluntary expression or compulsory doctrine?
- What happens to people who reject it?
A metaphor becomes dangerous when authority demands that it be accepted as literal truth.
Thus, North Korea shows why information science must not merely classify metaphor. It must examine the power behind metaphor and compare the image with observable reality.
“Paradise” is the official image; “hell” is the lived judgment of many victims. Neither word alone is scientific, but the difference between propaganda and evidence can be scientifically examined.
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2026-07-29 Mark Park
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