Self-Deception as a Ze-Pattern

This paper presents a formal theory of self-deception, reconceptualizing it not as a failure of rationality but as an emergent property of predictive information processing within the Ze-theoretic framework. We posit that the cognitive system functions as a Ze-pattern—a structured information stream—that generates a predicted Ze-stream (Ze_predict). Perception is modeled as a process of matching this prediction against observed sensory Ze-stream (Ze_real). We formalize the probability of conscious perception of an event as: P(perceive)=1exp(−|Ze_predict−Ze_real|). Large mismatches are classified as T-events (incorrect predictions) and are cognitively suppressed. The model is derived from the axioms of Ze-theory (Variant 1: Predictive Inference), specifically from the fundamental stopping axiom: Retrograde Encoding (R) requires complete cessation of Forward Reading (F). The perception kernel follows from assuming a stochastic threshold θ with an exponential distribution, justified by the maximum entropy principle (Jaynes, 1957). Self-deception is formalized as pathological threshold tuning: def