**Links to**: [[Simplicity]], [[Complexity]], [[Computational irreducibility]], [[Communication]], [[Information]], [[Individuation]], [[Pattern]], [[THE PATTERN SHIFTER]], [[THE PATTERN BUTCHER]], [[On the importance of vegetables and sand for philosophy]], [[Difference]], [[Equivalence]], [[Equivalence and difference]], [[Difference and Repetition]], [[Rifference and Depetition]]. ### [[Postulate]]: It’s nice to compress, but we cannot always compress what is nice. The above is a playful take on an oft heard refrain. The implication is that, while compression—defined as the reduction of a complex structure down to the decidedly chunked (see: [[Chunk]]) and/or fundamental patterns that compose it, therefore providing ways to reconstruct it—is **extremely** useful, the phenomena we tend to show interest towards are those which appear to increase in complexity, rather than decrease. Jürgen Schmidhuber says “science is data compression” (by this he means _simplification_). Karl Friston, sometimes citing Einstein, follows a similar path of least action. Of course, it all depends on what we define as *data*, and as (its) *compression*. Science, to us, necessarily means _expansion_, too, the results of science lead to more results and more results and more results: something problematic compels us to think, and this is not always formally compressible. When I look at a tree and see how all of its leaves resemble each other, am I _seeing_ a tree solving a complex problem by way of a self-similarity, fractal-pattern solution, or am ***I*** solving a complex problem by producing a self-similarity phenomenon, when “in reality” the tree is actually aiming for absolute difference in all its differential leafy glory? This entry is an extremely long series of notes I am still working on, #todo. ### Footnotes %% [[Compression notes]]