[Rachumlakenschlaff]

Rachumlakenschlaff wrote:
just like the words of a book contain more information than is embodied by an arbitrary collection of the same number of letters.

BMCDA wrote:

Wrong, an arbitrary collection of the same number of letters can contain more information than the original text. Just think of how this text looks like if you use a compression algorithm and how long the output may be if compared to the input.

Ummmm. Neither the compression algorithm nor its output are arbitrary.

[BMCDA]

Well, every message can be hidden in white noise. If you have the decryption key you can access it if not it's just white noise.
In the first case you can decode the message so it has meaning to you but in the latter case you can't "read" it so it has no meaning from your point of view.

So make sure you keep 'information' and 'meaning' appart.