Figure 1

From a compression standpoint, highly ordered patterns are boring because they are too simple while random chaotic patterns are boring because they are too complex. On the other hand, intermediately complex patterns - those that promise a chance of compression following some effort - are of particular interest. I use the terms the "edge of order" and the "edge of chaos" to define points of inflection in the imagined relationship between information content and ease of compressibility. The high pay-off zone is somewhere in the middle.