Structural Information

Structural information and related ideas. A conceptual sketch.

Note:

A helpful way to think of it is to split invariants into separate distinctions: Invariant conditions which are what must hold for anything to persist through change: identity, boundary, dependency, and ordering. Then Invariant expression is how the effort to maintain those conditions shows up in a particular system under pressure. The condition is abstract and domain-independent. The expression is its concrete manifestation under strain.

Structural information is the work required to keep invariant conditions satisfied, visible only through expression. Invariant capacity is the limit at which that expression can no longer sustain the condition. As pressure rises, compensatory effort increases. When that effort saturates or destabilizes, persistence fails.