Total Information

Total Information is the complete information content of a system, the sum of its substrate and recursive components, with the correlation information carried inside the recursive part, which the book holds constant from the Zero Substrate through all later evolution. It is the quantity behind the book's information conservation principle: whatever happens, collapse, renewal or dimensional emergence, the total is preserved and only its division between parts changes. In the ignition chapter the book uses its decomposition to quantify how inevitable emergence is: along the Emergence Timeline Sequence, from pre-ignition fluctuations through Loop Formation (~10³ ①⥂⧗⌂), Amplification (~10² ①⥂⧗⌂) and Critical Approach (~10¹ ①⥂⧗⌂) to Nova Ignition (~1 ①⥂⧗⌂), steps of the data's count that take no universe time, and on to Expansion, information moves between substrate and recursive components, and into correlations within the recursive part, while the total holds. Chapter 5 gives the conservation law as I⊚ = I_0 = constant, the initial information content of the Zero Substrate. The book writes I⊚ = I▱ + Iℜ [1ᵇ], where I⊚ is the total information content, I▱ the substrate component and Iℜ the recursive component; the correlation (mutual) information I≍ is the part of Iℜ held in correlations, counted inside Iℜ, not added to it. Total Information connects to Information Conservation, Information-Theoretic Analysis, Initial Information Content, Mutual Information Growth, Emergence Timeline Sequence and Topological Charge.