Table of Contents
This domain studies the high-entropy systems of meaning, symbols, and information that constitute human culture. The Simplicity-Expressive Power Principle governs the creation, transmission, and interpretation of this information. Every act of communication is an attempt to encode a complex thought into a simpler, transmissible formal system (a language, an image, a story), and every act of interpretation is an attempt to reconstruct that complexity. SEPP guarantees that this process is always lossy and incomplete.
Media
SEPP explains the fundamental dynamic of the news cycle. The totality of world events in a day is a system of immense entropy. A news outlet is a formal system (with editorial guidelines, journalistic norms, and a finite amount of space/time) that creates a low-complexity model of that reality. The principle guarantees that any news report is a radical simplification, its expressive power being infinitesimal compared to the complexity of the events it covers. This provides a formal basis for understanding media bias not necessarily as malicious intent, but as an unavoidable consequence of the information compression inherent in any act of reporting.
Journalism
The journalistic ethic of "objectivity" can be seen as an attempt to create a formal system for reporting that minimizes the loss of certain kinds of information. SEPP implies, however, that a perfectly objective, complete account is impossible. The choice of which facts to include in a story (the axioms of the report) inevitably bounds the expressive power of the final narrative. This supports the view that transparency about one's journalistic framework is more achievable than a "view from nowhere."
Communications Studies
The principle formalizes the Sender-Message-Channel-Receiver model. The channel is a formal system whose complexity (bandwidth) limits the expressive power of the messages it can carry. A low-complexity channel (like a tweet) has insufficient expressive power to convey a high-entropy, nuanced argument, leading to misinterpretation. This mismatch between message complexity and channel capacity is a primary source of communication failure.
Cultural Studies
SEPP acts as a foundational principle for cultural studies, explaining how meaning is constructed. A cultural artifact (a pop song, a film, a meme) is a high-entropy object. An individual or a subculture interprets this artifact using their own formal system of beliefs and values. SEPP guarantees that any single interpretation is an incomplete projection, its expressive power being limited by the complexity of the interpreter's own cultural "axioms." This is why the same cultural product can be interpreted in radically different ways by different groups.
Popular Culture
The principle explains the life cycle of trends in popular culture. A new trend emerges as a high-entropy, surprising signal. As it is adopted and codified by the mainstream media and marketing (turned into a simple formal system), its information content diminishes and it becomes a cliché. This creates an opportunity for a new, high-entropy trend to emerge from the subcultural fringe, repeating the cycle.
Communication Systems
SEPP applies to all communication systems, from spoken language to digital networks. Any language or protocol is a formal system with a finite complexity (its grammar, its vocabulary). Its expressive power is therefore limited. This explains the existence of the "ineffable"—experiences whose informational complexity exceeds the descriptive power of the language we have available. It also explains the need for specialized jargon in technical fields: this is the process of increasing the complexity of a language to give it sufficient expressive power to describe a complex domain.
Knowledge Representation
The field of knowledge representation is a direct attempt to engineer formal systems (
Ontologies
An ontology is a formal system that defines the concepts and relationships in a domain. SEPP dictates that the complexity of the ontology limits its ability to model its domain. A simple ontology will be brittle and fail to capture the high-entropy reality of its subject matter. This is why building robust, comprehensive ontologies is so difficult and resource-intensive; it is the process of building a formal system whose complexity is high enough to be a useful approximation of a complex reality.
Translation Studies
SEPP provides a formal proof that perfect translation is impossible. Each language is a complex formal system. The principle of "linguistic relativity" (Sapir-Whorf hypothesis) suggests that each language has a different kind of expressive power, able to describe certain concepts more efficiently than others. A translator is attempting to map a high-entropy message from one formal system to another. SEPP guarantees that this is a lossy process, as the expressive power of the target language will not perfectly align with that of the source language. The translator must always make choices that privilege certain aspects of the original meaning over others.
Cross-cultural Communication
SEPP provides a formal explanation for the inherent difficulty of cross-cultural communication. Each culture is a highly complex formal system of norms, signs, values, and unspoken assumptions. A communicative act between individuals from different cultures is an attempt to find a small, shared formal system (a "common ground"). The principle dictates that this shared system is necessarily simpler and has far less expressive power than either individual's full cultural context. This gap guarantees that information and nuance will be lost, formally explaining why misunderstandings are the default state and why achieving deep cross-cultural competence is a complex, long-term learning process.
Science Communication
The principle is the central challenge of science communication. A scientific theory is a highly complex formal system. A piece of science communication (a press release, a news article, a documentary) is a much simpler formal system designed for a lay audience. SEPP guarantees that this act of simplification is also a radical reduction in expressive power. Nuance, uncertainty, and caveats are inevitably lost. This explains why scientific findings are often misunderstood by the public and why communicating concepts like quantum mechanics or climate model uncertainty is so profoundly difficult.
Public Engagement
Public engagement can be seen as a formal process designed to bridge the gap between the complex formal system of science and the high-entropy system of public opinion, values, and concerns. SEPP implies that a simple, one-way communication model (like a lecture) has low expressive power and will fail to achieve genuine engagement. An effective engagement process must be a more complex, dialogic system that has the expressive power to incorporate public feedback and values, thereby co-creating a richer, shared understanding that a simple information-deficit model could never achieve.
Data Journalism
Data journalism attempts to use data and visualization to create more complex, information-rich journalistic narratives. SEPP implies that while this increases the expressive power of the story compared to a simple text-based account, it is still a finite model of a more complex reality. The choice of which data to present and how to visualize it (the axioms of the data story) still bounds the narrative's expressive power and can never be a complete, "objective" picture.
Visualization
As applied to media, SEPP warns that while a visualization can express certain kinds of information very efficiently, its own formal structure limits what it can say. A simple map can show geographic distribution but may lack the expressive power to show causal relationships or temporal changes. The design of a visualization is the design of a formal system, and its simplicity always comes at the cost of what it can express.